


Hot Pursuit

by DreamerWisherLiar



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angry Sex, Arguing, Assassination, Blackmail, Canon-Typical Violence, Car Sex, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Manipulation, Masturbation, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Relationship(s), Post-Divorce, Sex, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-07-04 03:33:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 21
Words: 174,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15832908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerWisherLiar/pseuds/DreamerWisherLiar
Summary: Detective Athos de la Fere thinks the worst thing he has to deal with is a hangover until his scheming ex-wife shows up at his door looking for police assistance. In five years, it's their first interaction that's not due to her former job working for the best fixer in the country, and definitely the first time she's willingly sought him out. The investigation sounds like his idea of hell, but could it also be an opportunity to finally move on from their painful divorce and all his unresolved guilt and anger? Or could it just destroy them both further?





	1. Rude Awakenings

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea if anyone will be interested in a modern AU, but I wanted to write this, so I wrote it. I hope someone likes it at least!
> 
> I put the archive warnings just to be careful, but the violence isn't very graphic and any non-con is only referenced - none actually happens during the story.

Athos pries his eyes open and regrets it immediately. The light is far too bright for whatever time of day or night this is, he decides blearily. His mouth tastes like he recently threw up, which is a distinct possibility. His head is pounding so hard that for a second he thinks that’s what woke him up – then he realises it’s not his head, or at least not just his head. Someone’s knocking on his door.

Great.

He staggers to the door – luckily, he’s already on the couch so he doesn’t have to walk half as far as if he’d made it to his bed. Unluckily, the shorter distance means that he doesn’t have time to really analyse what he’s doing. It’s only as he’s flinging the door open that he recognises the knock.

Five fucking years and he can still recognise the sound of her _knock_ , for fuck’s sake. That’s how pathetic he is.

Almost before he has the door wide enough to see her he’s trying to shut it again, but she’s already slithered by him and into his living room. The scent of jasmine floats up to him as she brushes past and it makes him dizzy, sense memory slamming him for six, deep-seated anger curling up from his stomach.

He’s abruptly more pathetic, because despite that automatic anger, part of him is thrilled she’s here. He can remember the toxic mix of horror, confusion, anger, desire, love and hate that swamped him two years ago when he saw her in the blurry background of a picture of the annual de Bourbon charity ball in a glossy magazine article and realised she was living in the same city as him yet again. He can remember the disgust he felt when he investigated her reappearance further and discovered exactly what her new job was, realised exactly who she was working for and what she was doing, and learnt she’d changed her name yet again. Hell, while he’s at it he can dwell on his jealous fury when they first crossed paths properly again a year ago, the week he spent in a bottle afterwards, the strain of not lashing out at work or with his friends. If he tries, he can even deliberately force his mind to go through every painful second of the last time they saw each other before the divorce that gutted him so completely five years before, the things she said, the things he said. It doesn’t matter how many terrible memories he sifts through, there’s a part of him that just wants her as close to him as possible. He would really like to believe that’s lust talking, because if it’s anything else, he’s even more fucked.

Athos shuts his eyes and bangs his head slowly against the wall next to the door. A hangover isn’t enough to ruin his day off. His ex-wife? That’s enough to ruin his week, his month, his year, and for that matter he might have to have that central pillar removed now she’s leant against it like that. Knowing his luck, it’ll probably turn out to be load-bearing and add his apartment to the list of things Anne’s destroyed. Sorry, _Milady de Winter_ , not Anne.

“Good morning, Athos,” Milady says, giving him a smirk as he slowly turns to face her. Compared to him – smelly, unshaven, hungover, and exhausted – she looks like something out of a perfume advertisement. Even the one long curl falling from her chignon looks deliberate. Her lazy lean against the pillar only emphasises her curves, and he’s absolutely sure she knows that.

“Get out, now,” he says, voice low. He continues to hold the door open to underline his order. He can feel the rage burning up from inside him, the way it tenses his shoulders, how it furrows his face with utter fury. He probably looks like a gargoyle or something.

She rolls her eyes, pretending there isn’t any matching anger in them, choosing insouciance as her weapon instead of rage. “You could at least pretend to be pleased to see me. Whatever happened to small talk?”

“How wonderful to see you,” he snarls. “Leave. Otherwise I’ll just throw you out anyway and lock the door.”

“You know locked doors are hardly an insurmountable barrier for someone like me,” Milady says, one side of her lips curving up in sharp amusement.

Athos’s next door neighbour walks by, muttering his usual half-hearted greeting to Athos, then freezes when he sees Anne through the open doorway. His mouth drops open and he gawps at her. Athos hates to admit it, but it’s a fair reaction.

Milady’s dressed like a secretary, which is to say she’s dressed like someone’s wet dream of a secretary. Her skirt’s too short, her heels too high, her stockings too sheer and her clothes too provocative and form-fitting for any real secretary to get away with. He notices with faint irritation that she’s even got little glasses perched on her nose to complete the picture, although he’s pretty sure she has 20-20 vision. It’s a perfectly baited trap for someone, and he has a horrible feeling that someone is him. He knows what she is now, though, and finding that out changed him. Six years ago he was an easy mark. Now he’s not.

She gives his neighbour a sultry smile that makes him turn tomato-red, and licks her red lips with deliberate slowness, although Athos can tell it’s not for the other man’s benefit. Its effect on Athos – well, one part of him is certainly fully awake now. This only sours his mood further. 

“Good morning,” Athos says pointedly to his neighbour, and closes the door in the man’s face. This is bound to be unpleasant enough without having to also deal with his neighbour hitting on his wife in front of him. Ex-wife. Whatever. He turns on her with a glare of pure rage, wanting to physically remove her from his house but rightfully concerned about what else he might do if he lays hands on her. “Anne, what do you _want_?” 

“I need help,” she says, leaning forward a little. It makes everything else move forward as well, the swell of her breasts straining against the white fabric of her top, giving him a brief glance of creamy flesh and blue lingerie. There’s a lot more flesh than lingerie. He ignores it to the best of his ability.

“You worked for Richelieu for five years, and less than a month after his death you’re out of cash?” Athos says, incredulous. On the bright side, he reflects, it could be much worse – as much as he hates the idea of helping out his mercenary ex, the thought of being able to write a cheque and get her the hell out of his life again holds a lot of appeal. Perhaps she’ll even leave the country if he offers her enough. Still, “You never thought of opening a savings account or something?” 

“Cheap advice from a multi-millionaire,” she drawls, crossing her arms. “But no, Athos, as it happens, I’m not here for your _fucking_ money.”

“Now why would you change the habit of a lifetime?”

She takes several deep breaths instead of replying, which is distracting enough in that top that he almost forgets how completely he loathes her. In the seconds it takes to remind himself, he suddenly realises not only that Milady is doing her best to stay calm and not snap at him too much, but that she’s skipped a couple of perfect opportunities to hit him with much worse low blows of her own, for example when he threatened to throw her out. Whatever this is, it’s serious enough that she’s ended five years of mutual avoidance, and it’s not just to mess with him.

He feels his stomach drop, all his instincts suddenly screaming that whatever she says is going to ruin his day even further.

“Richelieu didn’t die of natural causes,” she says, “He was murdered.”

Well. It looks like his instincts were right.

X_X_X_X

Milady watches in outward amusement as Athos goes immediately to a nearby cupboard and pulls out a bottle. Inside, she feels like her stomach has been invaded by snakes. Athos no doubt thinks that he and booze are a winning combination, even at this hour, but she’s not so sure. He’s always a bit less controlled when he drinks, a little closer to the edge, much more open and emotional than he is sober. Some of their best nights started with Athos loosened up from a couple of scotches. Some of their worst did as well. From what she understands, though, his relationship with alcohol has gone from ‘enjoyment’ to ‘unhealthy dependence’ since those days.

It’s strange to see him again. While it’s been five years since they had an actual conversation – and the word ‘conversation’ is a very inaccurate description of a violent screaming match she can still recall every word of – she’s run into him and his friends briefly while working before. Most of those encounters have been over the course of the last year, since Treville made a small group of his officers into a taskforce instead of just a team. They’re assigned the high profile cases, and most of Armand Richelieu’s clients were the high profile type, so there are a number of people Athos and his team (nicknamed ‘the Musketeers’ by the beat cops) would have thrown in jail if not for Milady’s quick thinking and what Athos would probably call her complete lack of morals.

Anyway, she’s seen him often enough that she doesn’t experience any shock at how he’s changed, at least not physically. But talking to him, that’s new. Awkward, too. He never used to have this air of cynicism. He was always such a happy person – before their divorce, anyway. She’s only seen him from a distance since then, but the lines on his face tell their own story. She can paper over her anger and heartbreak with sarcasm and cruel flirtation, but these five years have taken a toll on her as well.

“Alright, run me through why you’re not reporting this right now at the local police station,” he says, pouring some of the scotch into a glass and taking a hefty slug.

Milady watches his hand as he grips the glass tightly, remembering the feel of his fingers on her body. She admits to herself that the only shock she experiences when she studies him closely again after all this time is amazement she can still want a man who’s scruffy, grimy, sporting large bags under his eyes, and smells strongly of off-brand tequila and misery. But then, the chemistry between them has been a mystery from day one, it’s silly to quibble about it now. She only knows that when his blue-grey eyes get that steely, intent look, she melts, and she hates that she melts. She hates him most of the time as well. Other times, she reserves that feeling just for herself.

A nasty yet suggestive comment about missing him nearly trips off her tongue, but she swallows it back at the last second. She needs him to hear her out this time, not kick her out. “You know damn well they’d smile and nod me right out the door.”

“You could’ve gone to one of the men in my taskforce,” he points out. “One of the ones who isn’t me, preferably.”

“I’m sure they’d leap into action,” she snorts. “Have you forgotten they hate me?” She can’t really remember what case first caused her to cross paths with them, but they’ve hated her since then – actually, wait, yes, she can remember which case it was. The Mendoza one. Alright, perhaps it’s fair they hold a grudge over that one. She tries not to dwell happily on how thoroughly she routed them there, but it’s difficult. 

“Not nearly as much as I do.”

“Yes, but I know you. You’d die before you’d let your emotions affect your _duty_ ,” she practically spits the word, and sees him tilt his head slightly, confused by her ire on this particular point. She reins it in and continues, “That’s why I knew you’d listen.”

He puts the drink down and sighs. She takes the opportunity to tug it away from him and have a sip herself. Scotch isn’t exactly her poison, especially at nine in the morning, but she’s finding this more stressful than she’d anticipated. He gives her a half-hearted glare and takes it back.

“So. I’m listening, despite all my better judgment. Tell me why a sixty year old man, in a stressful line of work, with a history of bad headaches, dying of – what was it, a stroke? – seems suspicious to you.”

“A heart attack. And someone was pissed off at him,” she says lightly, back to her silky, amused tone. She can stay playful so long as they avoid any direct reference to their shared past and how willing he was to throw her away. That’s where it all becomes raw wounds. That’s the one flaw in this plan, how very badly she’s failed at moving on and letting the past go, and she’ll need to keep a close eye on her self control as a result. “Very pissed off.”

“Half the known world, I would think. You’re fixers, isn’t that just part of the job?” He downs the rest of the glass of scotch.

She shrugs. It’s not entirely untrue. “This one was a client though. A dangerous client.” She smiles coldly, lets the name roll off her lips like a curse, “Rochefort.”

Now Athos straightens, his attention completely caught. “Rochefort. Fuck. The Alvarez case? Marguerite Salé? You can’t be serious. Please tell me you had nothing to do with either of those disappearances.”

“If Richelieu sorted either one out, he didn’t loop me in on it,” Milady says. “But no, I think Rochefort probably dealt with those in-house. Well, assuming he was even guilty, but personally I wouldn’t take that bet. Our work for him was mostly above board.”

“Mostly,” he echoes with a hint of derision.

She resists the urge to roll her eyes again, but he’s not making it easy. “I’m sorry, did you think I worked at the local soup kitchen?” She tries to bring them back to the point. “Armand didn’t like him much. I think it was mutual. But for the whole time I worked for him, they co-existed just fine, until a few months ago when suddenly there were all these tense phone calls and Armand was avoiding meetings with Rochefort’s people.”

Rochefort is the Chief Operating Officer of a computer company, which Milady finds almost amusing given the man trusts technology about as far as he can throw it. Even his house’s security system runs mostly on old school measures like deadbolts, locks and heavily armed men. Of course, it hasn’t stopped him being excellent at his job – word on the street (well, Wall Street) is that Louis de Bourbon, the owner of the computer company and about a dozen other internationals, is considering handing more control over to his favourite employee sometime soon.

“That’s hardly damning. Why wait so long to come forward, anyway?” 

Milady understands the question, even understands the suspicion behind it. If it’s a murder, after all, it’s one that’s more than three weeks old, which she knows doesn’t exactly help their odds of finding anything out. Every hour of delay in a murder investigation brings down the odds of finding the killer significantly. In this case, while they’ll still have the results for standard tests stored somewhere, they’re past being able to do a lot of the usual autopsy and crime scene activities. The morgue attendants probably didn’t go into a lot of detail in the autopsy – as Athos was happy to point out, the circumstances of Richelieu’s death don’t exactly scream foul play. 

“It took a while to come together in my head,” Milady says. “But more importantly, Rochefort contacted me a few days ago, saying he wanted to send his assistant around to get his files from Richelieu’s office and see that the ones on the computer system were deleted – just a routine precaution, of course.”

“You said no.”

“Naturally. He sounded about ready to kill me when I did – really seemed to think I would just roll over at the request. We don’t have any hard copy files on him I can find, though, so I don’t know what he was looking for. I also checked and I couldn’t find anything especially interesting in any of the computer files I could get into. Armand was a paranoid bastard, though, so that doesn’t mean much – most of the really secret stuff was so password protected that it would take me weeks to unravel it.”

“We have a few people who are good with computers,” Athos says thoughtfully. “We might be able to -”

She shakes her head. “I doubt it. Before I could start work on it, the files were gone. Just disappeared. Rochefort didn’t request them again, which, honestly, is even more suspicious than if he had. He runs a computer company, after all. I’d think if anyone could delete the files before I had a chance to get into them it would be whatever hackers he has locked up in his business’s basement. But anyway, if Armand had something on him, I have no idea where he kept it.”

“Still nothing like proof,” Athos notes, but he looks thoughtful. “All just guesses and coincidence.”

She pushes herself off the wall and suppresses a scowl, twisting her body a little to relieve the tension in her back, and not at all because she gets a thrill from the way Athos’s jaw slackens for just a few moments in response. It’s good to know her ex-husband hasn’t entirely forgotten her. “It’s Rochefort. I want you to picture his face in your mind. Just hold it there. And then I want you to tell me, do you think there’s any chance he’s innocent? Of anything? The man’s a walking probable cause.”

She sees him consider it. Rochefort’s been suspected of a lot of things – the disappearance of Marguerite and the unfortunate Alvarez are only among the most recent – but there’s never been enough evidence to get him for anything, or even enough evidence to really implicate him. Some of that’s probably thanks to Armand Richelieu, but that’s beside the point. Someone annoying Rochefort, and that someone turning up dead, is a no-brainer. Or at least an interesting enough coincidence that Athos and his merry band of morons can hardly let it go, whatever their personal feelings about her or the late Richelieu.

He closes his eyes in defeat. “I’ll call the others in,” he growls. “And you, you’re coming down to the station with me to answer some more questions.”

“Oh, now that brings back memories,” she mocks him, although there’s really nothing funny about this situation or about any of the flashbacks it’s giving her, sexual or otherwise. The only thing stopping her from unleashing the full force of her rage and hurt is the knowledge that she needs his taskforce’s help, dammit. That she feels like she has the upper hand helps too, but it also makes each sharp jibe that much more satisfying and impossible to resist, and she knows eventually she’ll hit the point where his patience abruptly snaps. “Do you still keep handcuffs in a drawer by the bed, or will we improvise?”

His expression darkens. “Don’t tempt me,” he bites out, and there’s nothing flirtatious at all in his look of black hatred, but somehow it still makes her body clench.

X_X_X_X

“Do you think Athos has just become immune to hangovers?” d’Artagnan wonders dully, pressing the frozen peas to his head. He had no idea the freezer in the station had frozen peas, or why it would, unless it’s for situations just like this. “I mean, how did he even wake up?”

“Bounces back better than the rest of us,” Porthos agrees, nodding his head and then stopping, turning grey. “All that practice. Could be.”

“Still, it was a good party, right?” Aramis says, looking hopefully at d’Artagnan. “Proper send-off for you?”

D’Artagnan forces a smile. It was a very good bachelor’s party, despite the unwisdom of letting Aramis set the whole thing up, and he’s happy they did it. He’s even happier they did it a month before the wedding so he’s not green in the pictures. Right now, it feels likely his hangover will last at least a week.

“Why d’you think Athos -” Porthos begins, and then cuts himself off. “Oh.”

D’Artagnan turns round to look, and immediately realises why Athos has forced them all in on their day off. Milady de Winter is sauntering into the station beside Athos, looking around their breakroom with a sort of amused disgust.

“Does it count as police brutality if I end up with fleas?” she wonders out loud.

“Well, you know what they say about lying down with dogs,” d’Artagnan mutters before he can stop himself. 

She gives him a saccharine smile. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re hardly a dog. A little too skinny for my tastes, but -”

“What’s she doing here?” Porthos’s bluntness slices through the habitual exchange of insults easily.

“Reporting a murder, apparently,” Athos says dryly.

Porthos squints at them. “Why go to you?”

Athos gives a faint little shrug.

The answer’s obvious to d’Artagnan. They’ve all encountered Milady once or twice, but Athos has probably had the least to do with her since the founding of the Musketeers, as they’re known. She probably thought that would make him easier to manipulate. Normally, d’Artagnan would fall off his chair laughing at the idea of Athos being easily manipulated, but two things are stopping him from doing that – firstly, the fact that clearly, it worked, and secondly, his head would probably actually explode if he laughed. The tequila was a bad idea.

“Athos, could I speak to you alone for a minute?” he grits out.

“Go ahead,” Milady says with a wave of her hand. “I’ll stay here and pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about, shall I?”

“D’Artagnan, I’m well aware of your objections,” Athos says tiredly. “I share them. But as much as I hate to admit it, this may be an actual case. She thinks Richelieu was murdered.”

Well, that sounds surprisingly plausible. Richelieu called himself a fixer, but from what d’Artagnan saw, the man mostly broke things. Innocent people’s lives, for preference. It seems to be a lucrative line of work, judging by some of the outfits he’s seen Milady wear over the past year.

Everyone in this precinct’s thought about killing the man at least once, d’Artagnan’s sure, even if it was just idle daydreams. It’s not completely beyond the realm of possibility that someone less burdened with morals went through with it. If it’s true, the real surprise is that Richelieu made it to sixty before being murdered. Of course, that it’s _Milady_ saying this does give d’Artagnan pause, because he’s not stupid and he doesn’t like to repeat his mistakes. The rest of them look like they’re on the same page, caught somewhere between contemplation and scepticism.

“What, and she thought we’d want to give whoever did it a congratulatory hand-shake?” asks Aramis finally, hangover making him uncharacteristically negative. But then, he has his own history with Richelieu, and none of it’s pleasant. The two of them loathed each other.

“Didn’t he die of…” Porthos struggles to remember, then gives up. “Don’t think the papers said, actually. But they did say ‘passed away peacefully’, I’m sure of that.” 

“A heart attack,” Milady supplies. “And no, they didn’t say.”

“She thinks it was Rochefort,” Athos says, dropping the bomb casually.

Porthos raises his eyebrows. Aramis gives a low whistle. d’Artagnan drops the bag of frozen peas on the ground.

“Didn’t even know they knew each other,” Porthos remarks.

“Apparently he was a client, and not just because of who he works for.” They knew de Bourbon depended on Richelieu, but it’s a surprise one of his underlings hired Richelieu as well. It means that whatever Rochefort has been up to, he doesn’t want Louis de Bourbon to know.

“Marguerite?” Aramis says urgently. He took their inability to find her more personally than the rest of them, at least partly because he has feelings for Ana de Bourbon, Louis’s wife, part-time event planner and socialite. Ana considered Marguerite a friend, if not an especially close one, since in the course of their respective vocations they occasionally worked together and got along despite the clear power imbalance. She was probably the only one of the people they interviewed who seemed genuinely upset on a personal level about Marguerite’s disappearance.

Marguerite Salé used to work for the computer company Rochefort ran as a publicist. One day she came to the police with hazy suspicions about the way the company was being run. Nothing concrete, nothing definitely connected to Rochefort, and nothing the white collar division had been able to use. She disappeared a week later and the case was turfed over to their taskforce, who turned up a similar lack of results. Since it’s been months, Marguerite’s odds aren’t good.

“I’m here to report a murder, not solve a kidnapping,” Milady says, not sounding the least bit apologetic about this. “I don’t know anything about Marguerite Salé. Or Alvarez, if you also care about abductees who aren’t attractive young women.” Alvarez’ story is pretty similar to Marguerite’s, except that he worked as an international liaison for the company and disappeared three years ago instead of fourteen months.

“Why should we believe anything you tell us?” d’Artagnan says hotly, ignoring Athos’s gesture. “No, I’m serious. Remember when she seduced me just to bug my phone?”

“Not _just_ for that,” Milady says, giving him a slow, mocking up-and-down glance from under her lashes, though he can tell it’s entirely for effect. “You keep selling yourself short. Do you have self-esteem issues? Your lovely little fiancée not stroking your – ego – enough?” Her deliberate pause makes d’Artagnan flush with embarrassment and anger.

He shouldn’t have brought it up. Even a year on, the memory still burns him. He was so _stupid_. He received his first big case and had a surprise meeting with a beautiful woman eager to tear his clothes off, both on the same day, and he lost his head. Later that week, once the case fell completely down around their ears, all of them ran though their activities and encounters to figure out how Richelieu had known every single step almost before they took it. It took only moments for Athos to recognise his protégé’s slightly lovesick description as Richelieu’s right-hand woman, and Aramis less than an hour to locate the bug on his phone, but the case was beyond saving.

“Besides, you have no proof I bugged your phone,” she says innocently, and d’Artagnan hates her. “I -”

“Enough,” Athos says with weary firmness, and to the surprise of all of them, Milady subsides. “You need to tell us everything you know. Start by repeating what you told me, about Rochefort demanding the files.”

Aramis takes notes, and after some discussion, receives a qualified agreement to look at the computer, provided Milady can be present at all times. Aramis is quite good with computers, but Milady rather bluntly points out that that’s all the more reason she shouldn’t let him look at confidential files for every important person in the city. But with her oversight she’s willing to let him examine only the folders that items have disappeared from. Meanwhile, she’ll do her best to remove anything else interesting before she brings it over, just to double down on caution. Of course, that will take a while, it’ll be a few days at least before she can bring it by, she tells them.

“Now tell us what Richelieu and Rochefort were arguing about,” Athos orders her eventually, apparently sick and tired of the lengthy negotiations, an attitude d’Artagnan is in sympathy with. “Talk.”

She talks. It’s very little information, unless you have an academic interest in the adult version of hissy fits, but it hints at more information to be found – skilfully so, d’Artagnan suspects. She doesn’t know what the real issue was, or how Rochefort could possibly have killed Richelieu, but she’s very confident on other facts.

“Richelieu came storming through and called him a bloody madman,” she says, examining her nails like this is all someone else’s problem now. It’s the thirteenth one of Richelieu’s tantrums she’s run through, and d’Artagnan’s headache is worsening. “He kept muttering to himself. He said Rochefort would bring the house of cards down for the hell of it, but that Vargas would sort it out, and then he yelled at me to go do deal with the Vadim case instead of -” She stops, apparently alerted by their expressions. “What? It can’t be a surprise we worked that one. The information that man had -”

“Not Vadim, Vargas,” Porthos says.

“It’s not exactly a rare name,” Milady says, looking irritated. “I already tried to look into it. We have no Vargas on our files, but there are dozens in this city alone, and it’s not like we always worked locally.” 

“We know who it is,” Porthos says, before one of them can shush him.

Milady straightens, looking almost offended that they know something she doesn’t. “What? Who is it?”

“Thank you for your time,” Aramis says smoothly, reading everyone else’s faces and deciding the best route to take immediately.

She examines them one by one, ending on Athos, who raises his eyebrows slightly. That seems to decide her. For the first time since the Mendoza case, d’Artagnan wonders which of Athos’s past cases brought him into contact with the infamous Milady de Winter. Whatever it was, it seems to have left an impact. Her bugging d’Artagnan’s phone and interfering with the Larroque case are the closest d’Artagnan’s ever seen his mentor and hero come to losing his composure.

“Fine,” Milady says, with a big sigh. “But try and remember that I know a thing or two about Rochefort, okay? I know his habits, his weaknesses, hell, even the layout of his house, so if you’re going to -”

“We’ll be in touch,” Aramis says, still with his charming grin fixed in place. It has great effect on their female witnesses and suspects. Milady just rolls her eyes as she sweeps out.

“So,” d’Artagnan says slowly, starting to feel better. “Vargas.”

X_X_X_X

By the time Athos gets back home, his hangover has settled into a heavy, whole-body ache instead of any kind of sharper pain. They didn’t find Vargas, but he’s pretty sure they will tomorrow. He called the Captain to update him on everything and get permission to proceed, he contacted Lemay and asked him to begin looking into whatever samples and scans the morgue took from Richelieu’s body, and Porthos has started compiling the current locations of everyone they interviewed last time they looked into Rochefort. Finally he can just be done for the day. He’s looking forward to another few scotches. Maybe more than a few.

If he has six drinks, he’ll probably be able to avoid obsessing about Milady’s sudden reappearance in his life. If he has a bottle, he might even be able to blur the memory of her in that striptease of a secretary’s outfit. He’s not proud of it – in fact, he’s downright ashamed of his reaction – but that image is going to stay with him for some time.

Athos is well aware that his relationship with alcohol is unhealthy. However, if it helps take his attention off an even unhealthier relationship, the one he has with his lying, cheating, gold-digger of an ex-wife, than surely it can’t be too bad. And it is still a relationship, somehow, even with the five years of deliberate silence he’s pretended to enjoy.

She broke his fucking heart, so completely and viciously that it sent him reeling into a bottle, and it seems he’s not the kind of person who bounces back from that easily. Or at all, really. He’s spent five years expecting it to get better, but somehow every day ends the same as it began, and he’s still wounded and waiting for something to change.

This is not the change he wanted.

The second he lets himself in he can smell her perfume, so when he turns to find her sitting on the couch, lit by a single lamp, he’s not entirely surprised. He’s pretty sure she’s undone yet another button.

“Get out,” he says again, with no real hope of being listened to.

“Or what? What _exactly_ will you do to me, Athos?” she says, an edge to her voice, finally going for the low blow he’s been tensed in anticipation for the whole day. She reaches her hand up as if to protect her throat, an almost involuntary movement, then lets it fall. Her clear green eyes cut into him sharper than any knife.

Anne – Milady – has always had a thing about the scar on her throat, although that ‘thing’ is hard to define. It’s a thin red line, fairly easy to conceal with make-up, even easier to hide with the scarves and chokers she’s made into her signature. She always claimed it was from a childhood accident, running into a washing line, and when they were married he never questioned it. He never questioned anything she said. Now he questions nearly all of it. But still, he can’t bring himself to question the first time she lifted her chin, turned her head to the side, and pulled frantically at his hair so he would kiss the red line of her scar as he pushed deep inside her, and he understood that he was being given something more valuable than her body – her trust.

He tries not to flinch from the acute shame tearing through him as he flashes back to their last encounter as a married couple. A moment later, though, the shame subsides and he feels a matching surge of anger that she would dare try and guilt him after everything she did. Maybe they’re both terrible people, but he knows where the fault for the first betrayal lies, and it’s not with him.

“Don’t try and play that card,” he says. “I don’t want you here, Anne.”

She stretches a little, then uncrosses and recrosses her legs in that too-short skirt, giving him another flash of creamy skin and blue lace that he wishes he could un-see. “I’m just checking if you found Vargas. And going through some mementos while I wait.” There’s a cruel lilt to her voice.

He notices with a dull thud of pain that in front of her on the little coffee table there’s a framed photo. He doesn’t have to look at it to know what it’s a picture of – Anne and him at the park, back when they were first dating, attending a barbecue his previous department was holding. They’re both in old jeans, and she’s wearing one of his button-up shirts over a tank top, and they have dirt smudged on their faces from him tackling her to the muddy ground as part of a half-joking game of tag. They’re laughing so hard they can’t breathe, his face half against her neck, her leaning back against him on the ground, radiating pure happiness. Remi took the picture, he remembers, back when they were partnered, before everything fell apart. 

He’s told his friends that he’s divorced, of course, but he’s never gone into detail. Why not? Pride, he supposes. Shame. Humiliation, even. A lot of petty little reasons. Perhaps even a lack of faith, since after her and Thomas and even Remi, he finds his ability to trust is sorely diminished. Regardless of the reasons, he’s never been able to bring himself to go into it all. Back when she had her ulteriorly-motivated one-night stand with d’Artagnan – and the thought still makes him slightly nauseous – he let the others assume he’d come across her as part of a previous case, and that was why he could immediately recognise a rather vague description of her. He didn’t think it mattered, after all, it wasn’t like telling them would change anything. Besides, in all those years this was the first time he’d run across her, so what were to odds they would again? Then they kept encountering her and somehow it had been too late to come clean.

“You searched my apartment?” he says, keeping his voice even. He’s not even surprised. The him of six years ago would be, but now, he knows exactly what she’s capable of. Her files might only go back as far as her latest name change, but her encounters with the police in the time since their divorce have been spelled out in multiple reports. Since the Mendoza case, their team has added quite a few lines to her file. Suspected burglary, suspected blackmail, suspected bribery, suspected threatening with intent to harm, suspected, suspected, suspected. Her work for Richelieu wasn’t exactly clean. “Should I check on my valuables?”

He hasn’t owned valuables since the last time she broke into where he was living. After the divorce, his wealth went from something he appreciated to something he unfairly resented and blamed for his problems. While he’s still, objectively speaking, quite rich, now it’s nearly all in long-term investments he completely ignores, with any interest paid out directly to a charity. There’s nothing she can really steal from him anymore.

“If you have any valuables, which seems _incredibly_ unlikely, I’m afraid I couldn’t locate them to help myself to some alimony,” Milady says, another little twist of the knife. “But frankly your security is abysmal. If there was a safe somewhere here, it would probably be beneath my talents, given how good I am with safes. Really, anyone could get in here.”

“So long as they leave the booze alone, I think I’ll survive,” he says. “I could arrest you for breaking and entering, you know.”

“Yes, but you’d find it hard to make the charges stick, since I haven’t taken anything,” she says. “I haven’t even tossed the place. The picture was on your bedside table, Athos. Not exactly well-hidden.”

“No one else goes in there. You shouldn’t have either.”

“Feel free to search my place in return, if you like,” she says with an ironic little twist of her mouth.

As if he could find anything in her place she didn’t want him to find. Hell, even when he’d lived with her, she’d found it easy enough to keep any evidence hidden. Who she was, what she’d been doing, the lies she’d told – every single detail blindsided him. Even the thought of it stings.

“Spoken to Thomas lately?” he says harshly, fighting the image of them happy and rolling in the grass the best way he knows how. He reaches out to flip the picture over.

“Not in five years,” she says, voice suddenly hard and cold, expression unreadable. Her usual expression of cool, smug amusement vanishes completely, and that’s how he knows he’s getting to her. “You?”

“Regularly,” he says. It’s the truth – his regular Christmas phone call to his brother. Last year, they managed to make it to almost two minutes before he hung up, relieved that that particular duty was discharged for another twelve months. It was practically a record. Given another few decades, they might even be able to meet in person without him wanting to slam his fist into Thomas’s stomach until his brother throws up blood. Actually, maybe more like a few centuries. “He and Catherine are expecting, you know.”

Milady blinks. “My God, that poor child,” she says. It’s such a genuine and spontaneous response that Athos nearly smiles.

“I don’t want to do this,” he says instead, baldly.

“What? Throw insults at each other? Reminisce? Fuck on the couch? You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Fuck on the…” he feels his brain derail, and tries to fight his way back to coherency. He scowls at her evil little smirk, trying to ignore his body’s interest in what he knows isn’t a genuine offer. “Any of this. I’m never going to forget what you did.”

“I didn’t _ask_ you to forget the past,” she says, frustration breaking through. She uncrosses her legs again, this time to lean forward, almost imploring despite her obvious anger. “But you never listened to me, and you never let me explain, and you hurt me as well, you know you did. And it was five _years_ ago, Athos.”

Five years is nothing. His pain hasn’t diminished one iota in five years, and judging by the look she gets in her eyes when she talks about him hurting her as well, it’s the same for her. But some things are too destructive to admit out loud. “And the Larroque case was six months ago. Or don’t you remember trying to get an innocent woman arrested for a crime she didn’t commit, just to spare a corrupt businessman from having to admit he fucked up?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Athos, she got off,” Milady says. “In more than one way, judging by the looks you two were giving each other.” There’s a bitter, jealous tone to her voice that he tries to ignore.

As it happens, he and Ninon shared exactly one and a half awkward kisses (one was interrupted), after which she moved to another city to try and restart the career that the court case had stalled. He can still remember the feeling of relief when she said she was leaving, but he’s hardly going to share that with his ex-wife. “And your businessman got off too, didn’t he? I assume that was in multiple ways as well. Your job seems to involve a lot of multi-tasking.”

“I’m not here to talk about my job,” she says, and now her face is as expressionless as when he mentioned Thomas. “You know what, I’m not even here to talk about our past, although God knows we could both use some fucking closure. I’m here to talk about Vargas. To you, Richelieu was nothing but the enemy, but however difficult and dangerous he could be, he was important to me. Armand didn’t just give me a job, he gave me a chance when I had nothing, and I will always owe him. All I want to know is if Vargas told you anything. Please. I can help, you know I can, you _need_ me.”

He stares at her appraisingly. He’s so tired it’s hard to keep up the protective layer of anger, however much she deserves it, and the intensity in her voice as she pleads doesn’t help. Unless you count games in bed, he’s only ever heard her plead once before. “Why do I feel like I’m in one of those old detective movies? I’m Sam Shovel, and I’ve answered the door to a femme fatale pretending she’s a damsel in distress, and I’m going to end up shivved by her and left for dead.”

“Sam Spade. And based on that description, I feel like you’ve never actually watched the movie. Which is surprising, since we went to see it together when the cinema near our place was going through all the classics, and you said you loved it.”

He loved her, back then, but he can’t remember the movie, just the curve of her neck and the darkness of her eyes as the light from the black and white film played across her face.

“Please,” he says, weariness on full display. “Please just leave, Anne. We haven’t found Vargas yet. I’ll let you know when we do.”

Milady stares at him thoughtfully and then stands and walks towards the door, trailing a hand lightly along his shoulder and down his arm as she passes him. The touch lasts barely a second but he feels the desire hit him like a blow, just like it did the first time he saw her, just like it always does. His whole body tightens with need. He fights the competing urges to knock her hand away violently, and to catch hold of her arm tightly and force her closer to him. The ferocity of both of those desires shames him. In the end, he does neither, just stares straight ahead and controls himself.

She leaves in silence, and he watches her go, and he misses her the moment she’s gone. He doesn’t think he can face getting drunk right now so instead he lies in bed, closes his eyes and thinks of her in that short skirt, crossing and recrossing her legs; thinks of her arching a little as she leant against the pillar, all those soft luscious curves pushing against white fabric; thinks of her voice as she suggested fucking on the couch, however joking the comment was; and thinks of her stroking teasingly across his shoulder and how he was instantly and humiliatingly aroused by even that light touch.

When they were together he was always half-crazed with lust, and it looks like he’s just as pathetic now as he was then – but he can’t stop himself from enjoying it, however masochistic that enjoyment is. In place of his hand he pictures hers, fuelling his arousal with the memories of the way she felt and the way she touched him, and the memories are clearer and more distinct than they’ve been in years. It doesn’t take much until he’s spending – he’s not normally sober enough for this kind of thing, preferring to drown any needs in alcohol – and his shame afterwards is blunted by his exhaustion, so overall, it’s a win. He cleans himself up and sleeps like the dead.

He dreams of her, of course.


	2. An Unwarranted Suspicion

Ten months ago, when Marguerite Salé went missing, the team had very few leads. Vargas was a completely unexpected one.

It was Porthos who initially found a connection between the man and Marguerite back then. One of his criminal informants (and Porthos has _very_ good CIs) passed on the information that a man with a very strong Spanish accent was also asking questions on the street about Marguerite. This was interesting, because before coming to the police with mild suspicions about her own company, everything they could find out about Marguerite made her sound like the most inoffensive, respectable, white-bread person in the history of police work. 

The then-unnamed Spanish man was very careful, paying for drinks in bars with cash, not allowing anyone to get a picture of him. But besides his CIs, Porthos is very good at knowing who to lean on for information, and it took only a few days to learn that the man was known as Vargas. They found him, dragged him in, and he stayed completely silent. Aramis’s eager suggestion of beating whatever he knew out of him had been vetoed by the Captain.

Eventually, days of research got them a few more bits of information about Vargas, a few little mistakes in his past to use as leverage. But even when he spilled his guts, it got them nowhere in the end, of course. Vargas admitted that he used to work with Rochefort but they’d fallen out, that he was interested in what Marguerite Salé had to say, and that he had no idea where she was. Not all the leverage in the world could get them anything more.

Maybe now it can.

Porthos smiles across the table at Vargas. In his experience, a six foot plus, heavily muscled black man giving them a shark-like smile tends to make suspects uncomfortable.

“Your old pal Rochefort,” Porthos says. “Heard he’s fallen out with some other friends as well now.”

Vargas blinks at him. “No doubt,” he says, heavily accented voice dry. “He was never very personable.”

“Richelieu, for example.” It’s barely a flicker of the man’s eyes, but Porthos sees it, and widens his smile in response. “Still got your record, you know. Lots of interesting things on it. We’ve got some spare time right now, could look into them.”

“What do you want?” Vargas says slowly, leaning across the table.

“I dunno about the others, but me, I think you’re a little fish compared to Rochefort. Just like last time, we’re much more interested in him than you. No harm in ignoring smaller stuff if we’re busy on what matters, yeah?”

“I do not know anything about Richelieu,” Vargas says flatly. “I cannot help you.”

“But you know about Rochefort. Old friends, right?”

“I told you everything I know last time,” he says.

“You told us next to nothing,” Aramis says, speaking up for the first time, sounding almost amused. “We accepted it then, but we’re not always so good at handling disappointment. I’d suggest you don’t pull the same thing twice. We have very good reason to believe you knew Richelieu.”

Porthos isn’t sure if he’d call the de Winter woman the best source in the world, but he’s damned if he can see why she’d lie in this specific situation. Anyway, the hunted look Vargas gets tells them more than enough.

“We may have met… once or twice,” Vargas admits.

“So now why is it Richelieu thought you could help out with Rochefort? Why you, if he barely knows you?”

Vargas sighs, seems to give in. “Richelieu got one of his people to track me down. Apparently he needed help finding out where Rochefort was keeping something important, wanted to talk old passwords, old email addresses, the cloud. I said, are you a fool? Have you met Rochefort? If anyone knows how easy it is to get to that kind of information, it’s him. That’s why everything is hard copy with him.”

“Hard copy where?”

“His house, most likely,” Vargas says, then when they look at him with identical raised eyebrows, he shrugs. “Storage places are much easier to get warrants for, and you cannot always trust the managers not to investigate your items themselves. Rochefort likes to collect things and keep them near. Most of his files he keeps at his workplace, but a few of the most important he keeps in his house, because he does not trust the people he works for not to pry. He has a little safe for them, a very good quality safe at that. I told Richelieu all of this, and he thanked me, and that is all that happened.”

Well, it makes sense Vargas wouldn’t be as resistant if there’s no risk here for him. If he really was just a source of information for Richelieu on this one thing, he’s done nothing wrong, and there’s no reason not to come clean. Of course, that doesn’t dull Porthos’s suspicion. It’s a very convenient explanation.

So Rochefort had something on Richelieu – no big surprise, there. And Richelieu had something on Rochefort, because otherwise what file was he so desperate to get back? So they must have been at an impasse. Then one day, one of them pissed off the other too much, the other one threatened to use what they had, and it escalated until there was a body on the floor. But why would one of them rock the boat? Richelieu wasn’t the type to risk it all to do the right thing. Neither was Rochefort. Who stepped on whose toes? Who crossed a line? And where’s the proof?

“Do you know exactly where in his house the safe is?” Aramis asks.

“Not in his new house, no. I knew where it was in the old one. Behind some painting of a girl.” Vargas shrugs. “And that is all I know, so may I leave now?”

“Might have more questions,” Porthos says, throwing Aramis a meaningful glance. As one, they stand up. “You can stay here while we think about it.”

Athos and d’Artagnan look about as doubtful as they do.

“I was hoping for something a bit more…” d’Artagnan searches for the word.

“Relevant?” Athos enquires, deadpan. “So Rochefort has a safe in his house. Our chances of getting a warrant are non-existent. We’ve got nothing to go on but some vague suspicions.”

“And here’s worse news – Lemay sent off samples for better testing, but with the labs so backed up, it’ll be five days at least until he gets results,” d’Artagnan adds. “The original autopsy checked for all the usual stuff, but he says there are any number of rarer drugs and poisons that could cause a heart attack that the morgue wouldn’t have checked for. So right now, we have no evidence that there’s even been a murder, let alone that Rochefort is involved.”

“ _You_ spoke to Lemay? Wasn’t that a bit…” Aramis trails off. “Awkward?”

“The moment Constance told him she was already involved with someone, he apologised for asking her out and said he was fine just being friends,” d’Artagnan says, crossing his arms. “I don’t have a problem working with him.”

“You don’t?” Porthos says, amused by the way his friend’s speaking through gritted teeth.

“Well, I know I _shouldn’t_ , anyway,” d’Artagnan admits. “But do you know how hard it is to work with someone who’s interested in your girl?”

Athos rubs a hand against his forehead like he’s getting a headache, but Porthos just grins: Constance Bonacieux would probably arrest her fiancé for offensive language if she heard him call her his girl. She got enough of that from her first husband, the one who tried to make her quit her job on the force, and she’s not likely to let d’Artagnan get away with it now. He’s lucky Vice work from a different floor.

“Maybe there’s another way we can get into the safe,” Porthos suggests. “Like that time with my – with Belgard. We never got a warrant for his place either, just an invite.”

“It’s an idea,” Athos allows. “Exigent circumstances hardly applies to cracking a safe, though. And there’s no guarantee that Rochefort keeps incriminating evidence on himself there as well. It could just be blackmail material to keep his allies and enemies in line.”

“In which case, we’d have a lot of leverage on other people, my friend,” Aramis points out. “People with no reason to like Rochefort, and perhaps lots of info on him as well. Could work.”

“But how would we even get him to let us in his house?” d’Artagnan asks. “Do you want to interrogate him again? Remember last time? He insisted on coming into the station, he brought a lawyer, and he was gone in fifteen minutes. There’s no way he’ll let us into his house. Legally he knows he doesn’t have to.”

Aramis cleared his throat. “It’s possible that I could get us an invite. We do have a friend in common, after all.”

“Oh, no,” Porthos says, closing his eyes, realising who he’s talking about before the rest of them do.

“Ana will help,” Aramis says firmly. When Athos raises an eyebrow in response, Aramis gives a defensive wave of his hand. “I know, I know. She’s married. I don’t plan to go back down that road, Athos. But I’m still on good terms with her, and Rochefort works for her, more or less.”

It’s closer to less than more, in Porthos’s opinion, since however much Ana de Bourbon does for her husband’s companies, every single one is in his name. If they ever divorce, their pre-nup and his lawyers will make sure she comes out of it with next to nothing, which may explain why she’s still married to him. Or it might be for the sake of their son. None of them are too sure on that point, but whatever her motives for staying with her husband are, it’s unlikely that love for him is one of them. Regardless of her reasons, Porthos hates seeing Aramis hurt. It looks like Athos shares his concern.

Athos gives a shrug, finally, looking mildly irritated. “I suppose Madame de Bourbon could help with that, yes. When we investigated last time, didn’t she say she did all of his event planning?”

“What are the odds he’s having a party anytime soon?” Porthos wonders, but then shrugs. “Worth asking, I suppose.”

Aramis walks to the end of the corridor, presses a couple of buttons on his phone, and the next moment Porthos can see his face light up like it’s Christmas. This is only going to end in tears, he knows. Again.

He hangs up after only about a minute, perhaps aware of his friends’ concerned eyes on his back. “The odds are apparently pretty good,” he says, looking somewhat surprised himself. “He’s having a party for two hundred of his closest friends tomorrow night. Very high society – haute couture dresses, unpronounceable canapes, tasteless cocktails and smarmy bastards. We’ll fit right in.” 

“All my dresses are at the cleaners,” Porthos says, deadpan. “Can I borrow one of yours?”

“No, you stretched the last one out something awful,” Aramis says with a grin. “Anyway, Ana’s willing to consider giving us invites provided we swear we own tuxedos that cost more than the average frozen meal. She’ll be here in a couple of hours.”

“Interesting timing for a party,” Athos says thoughtfully. It is a weeknight, but then, posh people like that probably work whatever days they want, Porthos figures. Or not at all, more likely.

“Well, there have been all those rumours about him being promoted to managing a few of the de Bourbon companies,” d’Artagnan says. “Good time to hire your boss’s wife, I suppose, and schmooze with everyone else along the way.”

“And we can schmooze right along with them,” Aramis says, clapping his hands together. “Excellent. Looks like we have a plan.”

“A wonderful one. So we go to a ball. What’s the next step? Take pictures of the safe and make a scrapbook?” Athos asks dryly. “A party invite doesn’t exactly give us permission to pry the hinges off a safe.”

Athos is always very eager to point out the flaws in their plans, in his dry, sarcastic way. Porthos knows a few cops who would get annoyed by that, but personally, he thinks it helps to have the problems pointed out ahead of time. And even if they can’t come up with a solution for some sticking points besides ‘wing it’, Athos has never once failed to help them carry out a plan, however full of holes it is.

“Plain view, instead of exigent circumstances,” Porthos says, the idea striking him brilliantly. “We go to the party, wander into the wrong room, and the safe’s open. Bit convenient, sure, but who’s to say he didn’t just leave it open? I mean it’s not like any of us are believable as safe crackers, and if there’s no fingerprints but his...”

He has a bit of a history, sure, but nothing that complicated. No one’s gonna be able to implicate him in cracking a state-of-the-art safe when his last stint on the other side of the law was more than decade ago. And it wasn’t like he was ever even arrested.

“Except that like you said, none of us _are_ safe crackers. How would we get it open? Psychic powers?” d’Artagnan snarks. “Explosives?”

Athos closes his eyes. “No,” he says, and he sounds both miserable and exhausted. “A thief. That’s what Porthos is thinking. We get a thief to help us.”

Porthos shrugs. “Seems to me we know someone good at breaking into places. Allegedly, anyway.”

“Oh God,” d’Artagnan says, closing his eyes. “Really? Her again?”

“No harm in asking. She’s the one who wanted us to look into this, after all. I reckon she’d be eager to help.” He shrugs. “And if we’re all there, it’s not like she can get up to much.”

X_X_X_X

“A date with four men at once?” Milady widens her eyes, looking as shocked as she can. “Goodness, what about my reputation?”

They all look at her with varying degrees of irritation, concern, scepticism and amusement. “Can you crack the safe?” Porthos asks bluntly.

She gives a little shrug, nearly shrugging her way out of the low-cut cashmere sweater she’s in. She registers their responses to that with some amusement of her own. It took her a long time to view her body as a weapon to use against people instead of a target for them. Her progress towards that viewpoint was slow and unsteady, with lots of relapses over the years, so every time she feels powerful in her attractiveness she also feels smug about that power.

“Based on what little you’ve gotten from Vargas, most likely,” she says. 

“We could get someone else,” Athos says abruptly to the others. “There’s bound to be a CI with a history of safe-cracking. Some of them are fairly trustworthy.”

“Flea, maybe,” d’Artagnan suggests, looking cheered by the thought of getting rid of Milady.

“Nah, not for something that could be this risky,” Porthos objected. “Besides, if they make the link, that’ll implicate all of us, and we’d be lucky not to be fired.”

“He’s right,” Milady observes. Given his hatred and distrust of her, she would have expected Athos to be the one most in favour of forcing her to risk her life for free, not the one objecting to it. Apparently she’d underestimated his disgust at working with her. She makes a note of that for future reference. “I’m your only option, Athos, and you know it. Who else would agree to a plan so dangerously stupid?”

“Stupid is right,” he snaps. “Rochefort knows you. He knows what you look like. What do you think he’s likely to do if he spots you there?”

“Your concern warms my heart,” she says, the words both saccharine and insincere. After all, his concern is just an excuse to try and keep her out of this, and he’d be the first to tell her she has no heart. “This is all academic, though. Madame de Bourbon’s not likely to have enough time to give us a tour of the place while also playing high society hostess. I’m the only one who knows my way around. I already have a pretty good idea where the safe’s likely to be.”

“Could you draw a map to it?”

“I said I knew my way around, not that I was Rain Man,” Milady snaps. “I’ve been there a few times, that’s all. I could probably find the room but I’d have to actually be in the house. If you can get me an invite, though, I’m in.”

“You worked for Richelieu, and everyone knows Louis de Bourbon was all but in love with the man,” Aramis says, squinting at her. “Why don’t you already have an invite?”

“Louis is out of the country for the next week,” Milady says, quietly thanking God for that fact. He’s a complication she doesn’t need right now. This situation is complex enough. “Besides, I doubt he’d interfere with his wife’s event planning ‘business’.” She makes air quotes around the word business and receives a disapproving look from Aramis that amuses her. Athos doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at her, but swigs back his coffee like he’s imagining it’s booze.

It’s not like she can judge his alcoholism, though – well, of course she’ll mock it if she thinks it will bother him, but she’s well aware of the hypocrisy of doing so. It was surprisingly hard, waiting for them to call her in to the station today. After four years of nothing, and one year of taunting smiles from a distance, she’s finally in Athos’s orbit again, close enough to feel the heat of his unchecked emotions beneath the cold façade. It feels a bit like going off the wagon. The rage that’s stewed away under her own skin for half a decade is dangerously close to boiling over, and that damn hurt she thought she’d overwhelmed with the anger leaves her breathless when she feels the echo of what they were in a casual comment or expression. And yet, when she looks at him all she can remember is the feel of his hands against her skin – in good ways, and in bad ways.

After so long skating along the surface of the world, not letting herself go too deep, it’s tantalising beyond belief to _feel_ so much again, even if the feelings aren’t wholly pleasant. When she woke up this morning all she wanted to do was go and knock on his door again. Sliding all those little barbed comments under his defences is so wonderfully addictive, she almost forgets her anger in malicious glee every time she sees him fume. She came up with half a dozen good reason to go to him, but luckily, she’s had five years to learn restraint. She reminds herself that them being even nominally on the same side is a very temporary arrangement. After it all inevitably falls through, it could be years before he’s even willing to be in the same room with her again. Poking and prodding at him is a pleasure she shouldn’t get used to. But God, it’s such a rush.

She realises she’s been staring at Athos for a while now, thinking, a slight curve to her lips. His neck is reddening. There was a time when if she’d stared at him this intensely for this long, he would have grabbed her hand, yanked her somewhere private, and made her pay for her teasing. Judging by the look of him she’s not the only one remembering that.

With a muttered excuse, he gets up and is gone, storming out of the room like he can outrun her stare. Milady sighs to herself and lets him go.

“What is _she_ doing here?”

Ana de Bourbon has one of those voices Milady’s always hated – cool, confident, and aristocratic – and which she feels she’s never quite managed herself. She can do amused, disdainful, seductive, sharp, and variety of different shades of sarcastic. She can even do a superior or a demanding tone. But no matter how hard she tries, she’ll never have the note of effortless, unconscious command specific to people born with a silver spoon in their mouth. You can learn class or at least a show of it, but there’s a kind of utter privilege you just can’t mimic, and Louis’s wife has privilege going back a dozen generations.

Not so different from the de la Feres, come to think of it.

“Madame de Bourbon,” Milady says, smiling at her and tilting her head just a bit as if in recognition. “What a pleasure.”

“I’m afraid my husband’s not with me,” Ana says, voice cool. “So any ‘pleasure’ you’re after will have to wait.”

“It always did with him as well,” Milady murmurs. 

“Not your first meeting, huh?” Porthos says wryly, looking between the two of them like a spectator at a tennis game.

Ana, clearly feeling she’s talked enough to Milady for one lifetime, turns on Aramis. In a less elegant person, it would look like a flounce. Milady swivels her chair – well, it’s technically Athos’s, but she’s taken it for now – to watch. “Why _is_ she here? Don’t tell me you want an invitation for her as well.”

“Er… yes.” Aramis looks worried, but gives Ana a charming grin anyway. “Is there some backstory we’re missing here?” Milady had never rated any of their investigative skills particularly highly despite their occupation, but the stupidity of this question lowers her opinion even further. But then, judging by his expression, Aramis may be hoping just to brush by the awkwardness.

“That woman had an affair with my husband,” Ana informs him, each word enunciated with chilly contempt. 

‘That woman’ rolls her eyes at that somewhat biased recounting of their encounters. “You were all but separated at the time.”

“But he was still my husband,” she insists. “ _Is_ still my husband. What you did -”

“Is unforgiveable, I know,” Milady drawls. “If he hadn’t been separated, I could hardly live with myself, I’m sure. Any kind of unfaithfulness is truly inexcusable, whether emotional -” she slides her gaze pointedly from Ana to Aramis. “Or physical.” Out of the corner of her eye she manages to spot d’Artagnan’s uncomfortable look as well. So he had seduced Detective Bonacieux before her divorce, or possibly she had seduced him – interesting to know. “Don’t you all agree?”

It’s almost funny looking at the row of expressions – Ana, red cheeked with fury and unjustified self-righteousness; Aramis, guiltily twisting at his moustache and looking away, acknowledging the hit; d’Artagnan, biting his lip and crossing his arms defensively; and finally Porthos, meeting her gaze steadily, conscience untroubled. She almost likes him when he raises one eyebrow slowly as if to ask whether she’s satisfied.

“How principled of you,” Athos’s voice comes from directly behind her. She closes her eyes for a moment and turns to face him, trying to keep her composure steady. His face is completely expressionless, but if Ana’s tone was cool, his is arctic. She swallows hard, wanting to step back. “However, we’re here to solve a _crime_ , not listen to your no-doubt expert opinions on the subject of infidelity. Could we get back to that?”

Milady is fairly sure no one in the room knows what he’s really angry about apart from her – none of them have ever mentioned her marriage, and d’Artagnan isn’t the kind of person who could resist using it as ammunition, so if Athos had told them she would already know. But even if they don’t know exactly what he means, no one could miss his cold fury. It radiates off him, barely held in check. It leaves her a little breathless, choking on guilt, anger, pain, fear, and yes, desire. She gives a little jerk of her head that could signal agreement, the only response she feels collected enough to manage without embarrassing herself somehow.

Porthos looks between the two of them, brow creased, and then clears his throat. “Well. Long as that’s settled, then. Madame de Bourbon, she’s helping us with a case. Give her an invite and we’ll keep her out of your way, deal?”

Ana looks at him, considering it. “What’s the case? Have you heard something new about Marguerite?”

“It’s an ongoing case, I’m afraid,” Aramis says, giving her a smile that somehow manages to be apologetic and rakish at the same time. “I promise to tell you everything the moment, _the moment_ , it’s appropriate to.”

Any remnants of Ana de Bourbon’s icy composure melts under Aramis’s soulful look, little hearts practically floating from her eyes in response. Aramis is probably the only person in the world who could persuade Ana to invite Milady anywhere except the pits of hell. He does look so very pretty while he’s mooning over her that Milady can understand Ana’s weakness, though, despite not sharing it in the least. He’s attractive, but she’s not attracted, any more than she is to Porthos or d’Artagnan: it’s been a long time since she felt anything besides a sort of mild curiosity about anyone besides Athos.

It’s useless to try to regain her previous feeling of slightly scornful amusement with him still standing there regarding her coldly. Instead, she stares back at him, reminding him with a pointed glance around that they’re not alone, silently asking if he really plans to air their dirty laundry in public. The others are starting to wander off – Aramis unnecessarily taking Ana’s arm to escort her out, Porthos idly flipping through a file, and d’Artagnan cursing quietly at his frozen computer – but Athos standing there with that glare isn’t exactly subtle.

He doesn’t back down, exactly, but he does say, “Now that that’s sorted, you should head home, Mademoiselle de Winter. One of us will be by to pick you up in time for the ball tomorrow.”

They know where she lives – also interesting. It’s not impossible to get that information, but it is difficult, deliberately so. Milady doesn’t treat her location as a secret – it’s more of a test, letting her know how much information the people she’s dealing with have access to. She’s perfectly capable of dealing with anyone who finds her (nearly anyone, she remembers, and feels cold for a moment), but she didn’t expect the police to have it on file. Or perhaps one of the Musketeers simply followed her home after some previous case, although she’s hard to follow. For a second she imagines Athos sitting in his car staring at her apartment window and feels an inappropriate flare of heat at the idea. She doesn’t know whether the heat is fear, anger or arousal, but it hardly matters since she can’t act on any of them.

She really had thought this would be a lot easier. Swagger in, taunt Athos a bit, force him and his friends to help her, suppress any feelings about it except smug triumph, then get out. After all, she hasn’t had any problems remaining aloof over the past year – she’s ruined a dozen of their cases without feeling anything stronger than a little bit of satisfied malice. For the first time, she realises that that’s not a mark of how controlled she is, but instead because she didn’t have to deal with Athos directly while she worked. Now she is, and even from the first meeting, her plans have been steadily going off the rails.

Only in regards to her emotional equilibrium, she reminds herself, and who cares about that? She’ll manage. In the wider sense, she’s still the one with all the cards.

“Call me a taxi, then,” she says, stretching lazily without moving from the chair. “Unless of course one of you is free to drive me home? I mean, it doesn’t look like you’re doing much, but I don’t like to assume. This could just be how you operate during work hours.”

“Sweet talk like that’s why no one wants to do you favours,” Porthos notes, not looking up from the file.

“Call your own taxi,” d’Artagnan says.

Athos continues to stare at her for a while, then says curtly, “Follow me. I’ll drive you.”

She blinks at him, completely surprised and not a little unnerved that he’s willingly extending the time they’re spending together.

X_X_X_X

He may actually be insane. In the enclosed space of the car, he’s surrounded by the smell of her, ultra-aware of every little shift of her body or gaze. Why did he volunteer for this? Oh, right, to make it clear that he won’t let her bait him again. The way his body goes taut in response to her smirk is beside the point.

“Nothing like your old squad car,” Anne comments, looking around the car. “Nothing like your Ferrari, either.” Her lips curve into a sultry smile, and he knows she’s thinking of the things they did in both of those cars, and he knows she knows that he’s aware of what she’s thinking of, and the combination makes it so much worse, a feedback loop of hot memories and painful realities.

“I’m not that person anymore,” Athos says. He lost a lot of innate trust, but he gained self control, common sense, and the ability to defend himself from people like her.

“Oh, I know you better than you know yourself, Athos. I always have,” she says, face twisting like she’s tasted something sour. “Whatever you pretend, you’re _exactly_ the person you were then.”

“Whatever _I_ pretend?” he says, suddenly furious, hands tightening on the wheel. “I’m not the liar here, _Milady_.”

“Changing my name doesn’t make that name a lie,” she says. “Anne de Breuil was my name… at the time. I never owed you an explanation of every part of my life before I married you.”

“You still owed me more than the scraps you gave me,” he says. “And since the scraps you gave me turned out to all be tricks, lies and manipulations, I think it’s fair to say you gave me nothing at all. But you got plenty out of it, didn’t you?”

“I got _nothing_ out of it in the end. You made sure of that,” she says, voice still cool. “And what did before I met you wasn’t relevant.”

“What about what you did _after_ you met me? Was that relevant?” Athos says harshly. “Or should I say _who_?”

“I was going to explain,” she snaps, finally losing her composure. “I tried to explain. You remember how well _that_ went. I think we’re past the point where it matters.”

“We’re past the point where _anything_ matters,” he says, trying to keep his eyes on the road but taunted by the glimpses of her expression he gets whenever he checks his mirrors. “So why are you here?” He hadn’t meant to just blurt it out like this, but it’s the only question he has that matters. 

“I want justice for Richelieu. I told you -”

“Yes, it was a sweet little speech,” he says. “But you don’t do anything for sentiment.”

“You’d be surprised,” she says. Her cruel smile has a hundred secrets hidden in its curves. He wonders if some part of him always knew they were there, and that’s why the taste of her lips carried such a thrill, if really he always wanted to know what she knew and he thought he could find the things she didn’t say just with a kiss.

“Really? Is torturing me your twisted version of a trip down memory lane? Nostalgic for the good old days?” he gives a sharp little shake of his head, disgusted by the thought and by her. “This is a lot of effort for something so petty. Just draw us a fucking map to the safe and we’ll make do without you. It’ll be better for all of us.”

“All of us, really? Me included?” she asks, widening her eyes, pretending to believe him. “And after I draw you a map, you want me to go buy you a copy of Safe Cracking for Dummies? Sure, that’ll work.”

“If you quit, we’ll simply find someone else, or change the plan. I’m willing to take that chance. Since when are you so willing to put your neck out for justice anyway? You should just leave us to pursue this our way.”

She studies him, then shakes her head with finality. “No, I’m not going anywhere. You know why I’m here.”

“I never know anything with you. If you just wanted to ruin Rochefort’s life, why go through the law? We both know you prefer acting outside it,” he sneers. “Hell, from the sound of it if you just whisper a few sweet nothings in de Bourbon’s ear, you could get him fired.”

“I don’t think I could,” she says thoughtfully, and it’s so rare of Anne to admit any kind of defeat that he glances at her in surprise. “While I doubt Rochefort provides Louis with any services nearly as enjoyable as the ones I’ve offered in the past, he’s hardly likely to turn to me for business advice. Especially not if I’m throwing around half-baked murder accusations.”

“Services,” he echoes, hating what the word implies and hating her for using it. His previous disgust quadruples. “The same as the kind of _services_ Richelieu employed you for when ruining the Mendoza case, presumably. As an officer of the law, I should point out that both solicitation and pandering are illegal.”

“Oh, will you _arrest_ me?” Milady spits the question out like it tastes foul in her mouth, suddenly and inexplicably angry. “Don’t bother to answer, I know you would. In this case, though, neither Richelieu or Louis paid me specifically for anything like that, so you can keep your self-righteousness, your threats, _and_ your jealousy to yourself.”

“You actually think there’s that much of a line between what you are and being a -” he cuts himself off before he can say it.

“Prostitute?” she says, biting out the word almost viciously, though he thinks they both know he was on the edge of saying something worse. “Well, I think there’s a fair bit of difference, and I’d say I’m more qualified to judge than you are. But then, judging’s what you’re best at, isn’t it? Actually, the fact you think accusing me of sex work would shame me says more about you than me, even beyond it being inaccurate.”

“You’re right, it is inaccurate. Sex work at least has a degree of honesty.” 

“You’ve told me enough times that lying’s all I’m good at,” she says, and now she seems back in control, any rage or hurt hidden behind that mask of smug amusement. “Oh, sorry, lying, sex, betrayal, and driving you insane with rage. I always try and work to my skills.”

There’s a long silence while he drives and fumes and she stares out the window at nothing.

Eventually, he’s the one who breaks it. “My question still stands. Why come to us, if not to torture me?” he asks. “You have _skills_ , after all, however low those skills might be. More than that, you have information, you have money, you have contacts -”

“He has the same kind of contacts,” she says bluntly. “If I play him on that board, it’s a different game, and I don’t want to take the risk I’ll lose. I want to nail Rochefort to the fucking wall,” she continues, each word now pronounced slowly and distinctly. “I want to watch the bastard squirm.”

He loses his breath at the heat of her rage. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you this angry – at anyone except me, anyway,” he comments, and then regrets it immediately because it sounded far too light for what they’re actually talking about.

“Oh, believe me, I want to watch you squirm as well.” When he glances at her now, there’s a half smile on her face, but it’s full of malice. It’s the cruel, smug expression of a cat looking down at a mouse, choosing to play with its prey instead of devouring it immediately.

“If you think you can do more than annoy me, you’re wasting your time,” he says. “After the things you’ve already done, you can hardly hurt me further. I know who you are now. Your disgusting little tricks don’t work on me anymore.”

“Oh, really?” she drawls, and then her hand is suddenly on his knee. He can feel the heat through his trousers and he inhales sharply. She walks her fingers up his leg playfully, eyes fixed on his face to watch his reaction.

Athos is a very good driver, and has been since long before he was legally allowed to drive. After all, you can drive at any age so long as you’re on your family’s property, and the La Feres had a lot of property. Also, amateur race car driving was a rich person’s hobby and Athos’s father had been a fan of it, taking his sons every couple of weeks. And then the students at Athos’s boarding school and later his university had treated expensive cars as a status symbol, the faster the better. So by the time he’d become a cop, he’d already been better than his academy instructor at evasive manoeuvring. Athos almost never crashes, no matter how fast he goes, no matter how bad the conditions are. He can vividly remember the closest he’s ever come to dying in a car crash, and it’s no surprise that it would be her fault.

Once, long ago, when he was driving her home from a party, she’d looked at him from underneath her eyelashes and teasingly whispered to him how badly she wanted to fuck him, that she wasn’t sure she could wait until they got home. He’d told her with mock sternness that she would have to, and suddenly her tipsy giggling had shifted into something more dangerous – she’d said _oh, really?_ in the exact same tone as just now, and the hand resting on his thigh had moved slowly to his zipper, and he’d nearly swerved off the damn road.

She’d whispered that he should keep driving or she’d stop, her hand sliding in and downwards until she found him – he couldn’t stop, he had to keep driving, it was the only thought he could keep in his fevered mind – her fingers insistent against his skin, hand pumping him until he was so filled with desperate need he was all but blind to the road – the risk of running off the road heightening his need but also dangerously likely, but he couldn’t stop, she’d said if he stopped so would she – thrusting awkwardly against her hand and making turns at random, lost in the feeling of it, in the heat of it, the danger – _keep driving_ – and then she’d loosened her seatbelt and leaned down to find him with her mouth as well and he really had swerved off the road, barely missing a tree. Luckily he’d managed enough self control to brake and shift the car into park before his hands dropped from the steering wheel to wind through her dark hair and he was pushing his hips up to go deeper into her hot mouth, his head thumping back against the head rest with a desperate groan, feeling laughter shake her even as she sucked him deep.

As well as almost never crashing his car, Athos had almost never broken the law before. He was a police officer and he’d always taken that very seriously. But there was no fine or official reprimand in the world severe enough that it could have made him regret that night, or all the pleasurable ways he’d gotten revenge later on for almost getting them both killed.

In some ways, the tenseness that rises up when they share space is the same as it was then, a tingling electricity like the air before a storm. But there’s an edge to it now, a savageness fuelled by the anger and betrayal between them. He used to like tangling his fingers in her hair, but now he sometimes thinks he would like to pull it until she cries out – he used to want to kiss away her lipstick, but now he fantasises about biting it off, leaving her lips redder after than before. Judging by the look in her eyes, it’s the same for her. He thinks their anger and hatred for each other has warped the simple, sweet want they felt before into something crackling, volatile and dangerous.

It’s a fascinating, compelling, and deeply terrifying feeling, leaving him on the brink of doing something foolish and possibly violent whenever he’s with her. Athos doesn’t want to want anyone with this twisted, bitter, dark need, he wants to be a good person, he wants to be someone else, he wants to be able to let her go.

Milady plays this out nearly the same way as she had then, not caring how cruel it is to further twist an amazing memory (and recurring fantasy) into something sordid and malicious. She walks her hand all the way up to his zipper, and lets her eyes drop from his pained face to the evidence of his arousal, sharp smile widening at the sight of him. She taps the button at the top with one finger, and then hooks that finger around to pull it open, before sliding the zipper down inch by very slow inch. Athos tries not to groan out loud, still trying to concentrate on driving, but in reality concentrating only on her slowly moving fingers.

“Stop,” he manages to say, and peels her hand away with one of his, deliberately twisting it as he does so that she winces. His heart is beating so quickly he thinks he might actually have a heart attack. He forces himself to watch the road and not let his mind go to the places it wants to. He looks over at her and regrets it, feeling the lust crackle between them, almost visible in its intensity. He wants to pull her hand back onto him. He wants to park the car and yank her onto his lap and find out exactly how far back this chair goes.

“My tricks might be little, but you don’t seem that _disgusted_ by them,” Milady says, glancing away from him with studied casualness. He can hear how uneven her breathing is though and knows he’s not the only one who took a trip down memory lane. Maybe her ‘trick’ was on them both. “And that’s my house there – the circumstances being what they are, I won’t expect you to walk me to the door.”


	3. Dancing to Her Tune

Athos can feel all the blood from his brain head south the second she opens the door.

“ _No_ ,” he says, before he can stop himself.

“No? You don’t think it’s my colour?” Milady twists in place like she can’t contain her pleasure in the dress, making it flare out a little, though how she does even that in those heels without falling he has no idea. The movement gives him a glimpse of her thighs as the hem swings out and the amount of skin on display leaves him lightheaded. The only thing that could possibly draw his eyes from her legs is her cleavage, which is also very distracting.

“It’s a fancy party,” he tries, “Long dresses. Long, appropriate dresses.”

“For God’s sake, it’s almost past my knee, Athos. What do you want me to do, go change into my nicest floor length muumuu?” She rolls her eyes. “I’ve been to a hundred of these parties. Yes, it’s short for an evening dress, but it’s still an evening dress. Designer, even.”

His lips tighten. She’s probably right. Well, okay, she’s definitely right. The dress isn’t cheap, or ugly, or too short, or too low cut, instead it’s just too – well, provocative, like all her preferred clothing. The fabric is gauzy, and in some places, almost see-through. It teases. It clings. It doesn’t cover, it highlights. He thinks she looks more naked in it than she would in just underwear, and since he’s pretty sure you could see a _tan line_ through this dress let alone a bra strap, he thinks she might not be wearing any underwear anyway. It’s not a dress meant for putting on or for going out, it’s a dress for taking off, and even the thought makes him dizzier. He could probably pull it off her in one hard tug.

“We’re trying to keep a low profile,” he says, switching arguments. “We want Rochefort _not_ to see you, remember?”

Her eyebrows climb. “And you think a dress will make a difference? Please. The man doesn’t look at women that way.”

“He’s gay?” Athos asks, a little surprised. He doesn’t really care about Rochefort’s sexuality, but Aramis is catnip for anyone interested in men, and never has a problem using his charms to further an investigation. He does have trouble picturing Aramis successfully flirting with Rochefort, but they’ve come up with worse plans before.

“No, and I suspect he’s the kind of man who’d want to punch you for suggesting it,” Milady says. She tilts her head and thinks, trying to find the right words. “He’s got some sort of Madonna-Whore thing going on. Even worse than yours.”

“Excuse me?” he sputters.

“Oh, you know what I mean. Women are either beautiful, saintly beings to be worshipped, or nasty, inferior creatures to be despised,” she says. “He decided I was the latter a long time ago. He might get off on the thought of spitting on me or choking me, I wouldn’t put it past him, but regardless of what I wear I won’t stand out to him while there’s a Madonna around to idolise.”

He finds it hard to believe there’s any man in the world who wouldn’t notice her in that dress, but there’s a real risk that if he continues this conversation she’ll return to explaining exactly what she meant before, and he really wants to avoid his ex-wife psychoanalysing him if he can possibly help it. Anne always had the ability to get right to the heart of something, and in his case, he suspects she’d squeeze. The mention of Rochefort spitting on her or choking her already has him tense enough.

“Fine, then,” he grits out. “Let’s go.”

“A moment,” she says, and gives him a slow, evaluating up-and-down. She lingers over parts and he glares in response. “I always did like you in formal clothes. Are you going to offer me your arm?”

“No. And you can open the car door yourself too,” he says, still annoyed.

“You’re no gentleman,” she says, shaking her head. “But then, we both already knew _that_ , didn’t we?”

He stays silent the entire drive there, trying desperately not to look at her. The forget-me-not blue of the dress matches the little flowers in her hair, her favourite kind, and every time she moves her head the little dots of colour dance and catch his attention again. Last night she reawakened some of his car-related memories and fantasies, which isn’t doing him any favours either. Over the past five years, he’d forgotten – or at least, tried to block out – how easily her least little movement or word can send him spinning into a vortex of pure need. He should be disgusted by her, sickened. He’s not.

He automatically goes to her side of the car to help her out when they get there, too focused on trying not to look at her to remember he doesn’t owe her chivalry anymore, if he ever did. He doesn’t even owe her politeness. She accepts his hand out with a slightly smug look that he tries to ignore, but thankfully doesn’t comment. The valet gives him a look of sincere envy and admiration as he hands over the keys, and Athos is very sure it’s not the car he’s appreciating.

Ana de Bourbon is by the door, greeting people like the perfect hostess, classically beautiful in something long and elegant, tasteful jewellery at her ears and throat. The contrast between her gown and pearls and Milady’s brighter, tighter, shorter dress and chunky silver heart earrings and matching choker pendant is striking. If her smile doesn’t quite freeze when she sees Milady it certainly chills. “Enjoy the party,” she says, with a little bit of asperity.

“Always,” Milady says with a smile.

He doesn’t know what to think about her and Louis de Bourbon. Actually, he knows exactly what he _should_ think – he should feel a mixture of pity and contempt for the poor bastard, since Milady will ruin his life like she ruins everything, like she ruined his own – but it bears no resemblance to what he _does_ think, which isn’t really thinking it all, just the same mess of jealousy and hatred and disgust and desire that he felt when he realised exactly who had bugged d’Artagnan’s phone. It’s just easier to express it as judgment for her life choices than admit to any of those emotions. He should feel nothing but disgust when he looks at Milady, he shouldn’t want to touch her, and he _especially_ shouldn’t want to kiss her. After all, he knows some of the places those lips have been.

“Thank God you’re finally here,” Porthos mutters, coming over to them immediately. “Aramis has a fan club swooning over him, d’Artagnan’s arguing with a waiter about whether Gascon cuisine needs duck fat, of all bloody things, and everyone keeps making tutting noises every time I try and get food.”

Athos raises an eyebrow at the five mini-quiches Porthos is holding protectively. “That could be because they want some too.”

“Then they should’ve got in faster,” Porthos says, popping another one in his mouth defiantly. “These things are _tiny_. Why is it that rich people stuff either has to be ten times the size it should be or one tenth of the size? ‘Specially food. Still, least there’s free booze, and lots of it.”

Milady looks at Athos. “And you were worried _I’d_ attract attention? Really?”

“Rochefort isn’t here yet,” Porthos says, with as much dignity as he can manage through another mini-quiche. “When he is, I’ll fade right into the background, you watch.”

“Right. Like a chameleon.” Milady smiles in what looks like genuine amusement, and it makes Athos’s chest feel suddenly too tight, his bow tie suddenly choking him. When she smiles like that, her face lights up, and it takes him back to five years ago, to six years ago, when he would’ve done damn near anything to see her smile, when he lived for that sight.

“Nice dress, by the way,” Porthos adds cheerfully. He doesn’t like Milady much, Athos knows, but unlike d’Artagnan or Athos himself he’s not much of a grudge holder. He’s good at taking the world as it comes.

“You scrub up well yourself,” Milady says, giving him an appreciative look up and down, much less intense than the one she gave Athos. 

Athos takes her arm, not sure why he’s doing it, but aware it’s something to do with wanting that smile of hers aimed in his direction instead of his friend’s. She casts him a surprised glance. “We can’t try and find the safe yet,” he says, trying to focus on the job at hand instead of the complication by his side. “Not enough people. In about two hours security will be distracted trying to deal with the crowds -”

“And with tipsy couples trying to find private corridors and spare rooms,” Milady pipes up helpfully.

“They do that at fancy parties too?” Porthos asks. “Good to know.”

“Free booze, remember,” Athos says. “And yes.” He blinks, and registers something Porthos said earlier. “How can Rochefort not be here yet? It’s his party. And his house, for that matter.”

“Should’ve said that better. He’s here, yeah, but schmoozing in the back rooms with some businessman. Madame de Bourbon says he promised to stop all the business talk and be back out by the time she’s left her place by the door, though, because he wants a dance with her.”

The idle question of whether Ana de Bourbon is a Madonna or a whore flies into Athos’s head only to be immediately dismissed: Ana could probably earn a living posing as the actual Madonna for art students, if she ever actually leaves her husband and needs an income. But that’s all just appearances, he supposes, and it’s not like the perfect Madame de Bourbon’s behaviour with Aramis has been above reproach. His wife is just as beautiful, even more beautiful in his opinion – _ex_ -wife, dammit, why does he keep getting that wrong? – and apparently Rochefort thinks she’s a whore. It’s an opinion he’s shared in the past, and still shares occasionally, but it still pisses him off anyway, since apparently he’s just a hypocrite that way. 

Or not a hypocrite. He has the right to look down on Milady, to despise her for what she’s done. He’s earned that right with blood and tears and alcoholism and heartbreak. Unless she’s charmed, seduced, and utterly betrayed Rochefort as well (and he’s not dismissing that possibility out of hand), the man has no right to be contemptuous of her.

“We should mingle,” Milady says. “Keep close to the walls but away from doors. Try and always be in conversation with at least two people, but make sure they’re not too important.”

“How do we tell if they’re important?” Porthos wants to know, although Athos is sure he’s already memorised who the movers and shakers in the place are. People often mistake Porthos’s size, strength, and slang for stupidity. They just as often end up regretting that assumption.

“The look on their faces,” Milady says, “If they look thrilled to be here, or completely indifferent and unimpressed, either way, they’re trying too hard. A sort of vacant, mildly pleased expression is the hallmark of really good breeding. Or really terrible inbreeding. Either way, avoid them.”

“Right,” Porthos says. “Met a nice lady by these terrible dry prosciutto snacks, I reckon she’ll be my cover. Maybe even help me find an empty room.” He raises his eyebrows.

“If we have to pretend to be doing that, we’re not involving civilians,” Athos tells him bluntly. “You and Aramis can be paired again. You make a more convincing couple than half the married people here as it is.”

“You take a tango class with someone _one time_ ,” Porthos says, unbothered by this instruction. He spots another waiter. “’Scuse me, if we’re gonna spend the rest of the night hiding, I need another drink.”

“Isn’t that usually your line?” Milady wonders, looking at Athos, smile glittering in the twinkling lights of the room. He can’t tell whether it’s intended as a jibe or not. Her remarks seem softer tonight, somehow. There’s an odd note to them.

“I do need a drink,” Athos says. “One for you as well?”

“Shouldn’t we split up?” she asks, tilting her head slightly. “If Rochefort spots us…”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” he says a little grimly, and immediately regrets it. When he was worried about her safety before, it ironically seemed to make her more eager to put her life at risk. He quickly adds, “I just want to keep an eye on you.” Fuck, that’s worse. He can’t even tell if it came out as suspicious, overprotective, or worst of all, flirtatious. Actually, forget how it came out, he doesn’t even know what he _meant_.

Her amused expression cools slightly. “I’m sure you do,” she says, and lets go of his arm. “Take me to the wine, then.”

The waiter looks almost unnerved by Athos’s desperate expression, but gives them each a glass of champagne and a polite smile. He nearly drains his, while she sips lightly at hers.

“I need to break into a safe later,” she points out in response to his confused look. “I’m not a lightweight, but it’s best to err on the side of caution when committing a felony.”

“While technically, it may be a felony -” he starts to say, uneasy.

“Athos. Of course it’s a fucking felony.” She shakes her head and crosses her arms beneath her breasts. He glances down at her cleavage as she does so because he’s an idiot and can’t help himself. “It is amazing how you and the other Musketeers rush to cross lines, as soon as you can justify it to yourself.”

He exhales through his nose, trying to contain his temper. It doesn’t help. He doesn’t know how to explain to her that there’s a difference between twisting the law to condemn someone like Rochefort the way the Musketeers do, and breaking it to save the most corrupt people in the country like she does. Maybe there shouldn’t even be a difference, not for a cop. He hates it when she has a point. “Perhaps you were right before,” he says curtly. “We should split up.”

“Gladly,” she mutters, and watches him stalk off to the other side of the room.

Athos needs something to do so he goes off to find the others and set a time and place to meet before they begin searching the house. Now that nearly everyone’s arrived, people have started drifting over to the dance floor, and that makes his friends easier to find in the remainder. He briefly speaks to Aramis, who’s surrounded by a large group of women and one or two scowling husbands, pulls Porthos away from chatting up a beautiful brunette with earrings like chandeliers for a moment, and is looking out for d’Artagnan when he realises Milady’s in trouble.

It’s a big room, there’s hundreds of people, and he’s avoiding her, so he shouldn’t even be able to see her. Except that he really does have to keep an eye on her. Of course he does. She’s his responsibility. And right now there’s a gentleman leaning in so that his head is almost in her cleavage, stroking her arm in an overfriendly way, and in general just being inappropriate. He remembers the expression on Anne’s face – _Milady’s_ face, why is this so hard? – from when they were married. It’s the set expression she wears when she’s about to verbally (or possibly physically) shank someone. Probably best to step in.

“Excuse me,” he says smoothly, stepping forward. “I hate to interrupt, but I wanted to ask if you’d like to dance with me?”

Milady flutters her eyelashes, moving away from the man. “Why, of course!” She takes his arm yet again, wearing a fixed smile. “I had it handled,” she hisses through clenched teeth as he leads her to the floor. “I’m not a damsel in distress, you know.”

“Didn’t cross my mind for a second,” he says. “I just didn’t want you to attract attention by maiming him.”

“Hmm, alright then.” Her smile becomes a bit more natural, and she links her hands behind his neck, moving easily into the generic slow dance shuffle people do when they’re more talking than dancing. He closes her eyes for a moment at the touch of her fingers, feeling again that crackle of electricity shoot from her touch to every part of her body, leaving him tingling. Her scent drifts up to him, sweet but also rich and exotic, and he remembers inhaling that smell (laced with sweat and sex) every night as he fell asleep in their shared bed. It’s the smell of desire to him, but also the smell of torment – he threw out all the sheets and pillows they owned after what she did rather than try to live with the sense memory. He was already drowning in memory enough, back then.

He rests his hands lightly on her waist, the fabric so thin he swears he can feel the silkiness of her skin through it, and tries not to drown in memory or desire this time. It must be his imagination that makes him think she shivers at his touch.

She’s standing too close for his mind to be very clear, but he manages to say, “So how _were_ you going to deal with him?”

“How – oh, right. My shoes,” she says, like this is a normal response. She sways against him like they really are dancing, and as always, he’s hypnotised by the fluid movement of her body. She always somehow manages to make every small motion both elegant and erotic, no matter how purposefully or aimlessly she’s moving. “The heels, specifically.”

He glances downwards and blinks. Before, he’d noticed they were high. Now, he notices they’re also sharper than shoes should normally be. “You could definitely stab someone with those,” he admits. “If you had one at my throat, I’d be scared.”

“Now there’s a fantasy,” she smirks at him. “But actually I was just going to stomp on his foot. I don’t care how expensive the leather in his shoes is, he’d feel that.”

For a moment he’s tempted to ask what kind of fantasy she means, but sense prevails. “We’re meeting at the door at the other end in ten minutes,” he says instead, trying to return the conversation to business. When they talk like this, they sound almost fond of each other. He can’t stand it. “If Aramis can free himself from his harem, anyway. And hopefully Porthos found d’Artagnan to tell him because I couldn’t see him anywhere.”

“I think he’s been hiding by the potted plants,” Milady says. “I suppose they remind him of home.”

He feels a flair of jealousy, although there’s no fondness for d’Artagnan in her voice – in fact, no hint of closeness at all, nothing but the same indifferent mockery she extends to nearly everyone. He wishes he was stupid enough to ask if she’d known d’Artagnan was his friend and team-mate when she slept with him or if their paths crossing through that was just as much of a shock to her. He can’t decide which would hurt more – if it was partly to spite him, or if it had absolutely nothing to do with him at all.

She glances down. “Athos, do you have handcuffs hidden in your pocket?”

“Just in case,” he says defensively.

“And your service weapon, I’m guessing,” she says, mouth twisting in rueful amusement. She used to joke that he’d wear all the tools of his job to bed along with his badge if she hadn’t banned it. Though of course the handcuffs ban hadn’t lasted for very long.

“Can’t be too careful. And they didn’t have a metal detector,” he says. “Perhaps Madame de Bourbon thought it would ruin the ambience.”

Milady gives him a look that’s unmistakeably fond. “Perhaps. Anyway, if we have ten minutes, we have enough time for a proper dance,” she says decisively, and pulls him towards the other dancing couples.

He follows where she leads, unable to stop himself, already shifting automatically into the steps he learnt so long ago at his parents’ behest. She moves with him, all easy grace, unconsciously matching every movement he makes, the perfect partner. She’s the only person he’s ever danced with who didn’t make him feel clumsy and awkward. Instead, it feels like a natural extension of everything else they do, moving with her in time, every step mirroring hers, dancing closer and then apart to the slow swell and throb of the music and their bodies, twirling her around only to pull her back in by their joined hands. It’s like dream that steadily becomes more real, music rising to a crescendo, the curve of her grin matching his, her eyes the brightest green he’s ever seen, the background fading away. It reminds him of their wedding. It reminds him of their wedding night as well.

Athos holds her close, and dances, and knows he’ll regret it in the morning.

X_X_X_X

“They’re late,” grumbles Porthos. “Someone’s gonna notice us all standing around.”

Rochefort’s security is as busy as they expected them to be, and even better, they’re focused on a group of businessmen d’Artagnan somehow persuaded to demand a rare type of scotch from the bar. It’s a great distraction, with only the minor flaw that the bar is quite close to where they are now, and there’s a real risk Rochefort will come to deal with the commotion himself.

“I feel you’re not focusing on the important part, my friend,” Aramis says, peering over at the dance floor. “Which is that Athos can _dance_.”

He’s rather impressed by that. It’s such a terribly un-Athos thing to do. But there he is, fitting in perfectly with all the society darlings, twirling Milady about like that, fluidly graceful. They’re both excellent dancers, but there’s something else there that Aramis can’t put his finger on. Something about the way they move together. If it wasn’t extremely unlikely, he’d think they’d danced together before.

Then he stiffens. “Rochefort is coming this way,” he says.

“Keep your face turned to the wall,” d’Artagnan hisses to Porthos. “It was you and Athos who interrogated him last time, wasn’t it?”

“It was a quarter hour nearly a year ago, we’re not that memorable,” Porthos objects, but turns to face the wall anyway. It doesn’t make him look particularly covert, but then, that’s not exactly their specialty.

“Pretend you’re in a conversation with me,” d’Artagnan says to Aramis frantically, forgetting that in fact, Aramis _is_ in a conversation with him.

“How about instead you’re awkwardly hitting on me and I’m trying to extract myself? It’s more believable,” Aramis suggests.

“Get bent,” d’Artagnan says, relaxing a little bit to glare at him. The relaxation was what Aramis was aiming for: the glare, not so much.

“See, now just aim for a more seductive tone,” Aramis says. He smiles in as friendly a way as he can manage when Rochefort looks over at him. Unfortunately, the man’s eyes narrow and he walks over to them.

“I don’t believe I know you,” he says, sneer forming. Aramis remembers that back when he was watching Rochefort through the glass while Athos and Porthos were interviewing him, he was surprised by that voice – it’s drawling and a bit nasal, and somehow at the time he thought it didn’t quite fit the owner. But now he can’t imagine Rochefort sounding any other way. There’s something eminently punchable about the man.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Aramis says, widening his smile.

“This is my party,” Rochefort says. He studies Aramis, eyes narrowing further, like he’s sure he knows Aramis from somewhere and is just trying to figure out where.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Aramis says apologetically. “Plus one, you know. Don’t really know anyone here.”

“Whose plus one?”

“Adele Bessette,” Aramis answers promptly. She probably is here somewhere, come to think of it. Damn good thing she hasn’t seen him if that’s the case. It didn’t end fantastically well with her, what with her dumping her on-again off-again boyfriend for him and him meeting Ana the next week. He’ll always be fond of her, of course, but she may not still share the same fondness despite her previous devotion to him. Or because of that previous devotion. Anyway, she ended up back with the boyfriend in the end. Except now, of course, he’s dead, and Aramis is investigating his murder. Funny how it all turns out.

He can see Rochefort trying to place the name, and the moment when he recognises it. “I wasn’t aware she was coming,” he says slowly. “Since Armand’s untimely death…”

Aramis shrugs, as if to convey that he’s confused as Rochefort. He strokes his beard, trying to look thoughtful. “I suppose she wanted to get out of the house, get her mind off it, that sort of thing. I’m excellent at that.” He gives Rochefort a roguish smile.

After a long pause, the man gives a short nod and returns to dealing with the issue at the bar. He’s interrupted by Ana before he can do much more about it, though – Aramis wonders if she saw them talking and came to save him. The thought makes him smile at her in gratitude, but she doesn’t look his way. She’s better at keeping her feelings to herself than he’ll ever be.

“Adele? You went with _Adele_?” d’Artagnan says incredulously.

“Worked, didn’t it?” Aramis says.

“You had a dozen women around you before, but you couldn’t remember a single name besides Richelieu’s girlfriend?”

“Ex-girlfriend, when I dated her,” Aramis says, slightly too defensively. “Eventually.”

“Someday, maybe you should date a woman who doesn’t have a boyfriend or husband who could completely fuck up your life,” Porthos suggests. “Just a thought.”

“You had a thought? Count me amazed,” Milady says, arriving beside them. She’s breathless, face slightly flushed, and instead of sounding cutting, she just sounds distracted. Athos moves into place beside her, expression unreadable.

“Let’s go,” Athos says, as if they weren’t all waiting for him and Milady to stop dancing. And isn’t that a bizarre sentence, Aramis thinks, still quietly amused that Athos knows how to dance and was willing to dance with Milady de Winter of all people. Athos’ll never be able to mention that tango class again, that’s for sure, not now that they have this ammo to fire back with.

“This way,” Milady says, moving in front of them to take the lead, ignoring their sour expressions.

“You’re not in charge,” d’Artagnan hisses, following her anyway.

“Oh, sorry, do _you_ know where we’re going? I’m surprised you didn’t leave without me, then, instead of standing about here uselessly.”

“If Athos hadn’t been over there minding you, I would have,” d’Artagnan growls. “And don’t act like we’re the useless ones. You’re the one who went off to screw around instead of turning up on time.” 

“Are you saying it’s my fault you came too soon?” Milady says, so innocently that if he couldn’t see the gleam in her eye, Aramis might not have realised she’s messing with their youngest member.

Apparently it goes entirely over d’Artagnan’s head, because he says in response, in an annoyed voice, “Forget about too soon, I was starting to wonder if you were going to come at _all_.”

He doesn’t seem to realise what he just said any more than he understood her innuendo, but the rest of them get it immediately. Oh, Gascony. It’s such a wonderfully innocent place.

Milady smirks at them all, repressing the no-doubt self-esteem-destroying response she has lined up. She doesn’t need to say it, since they can all guess the kind of reply she could make to _that_. “Too easy,” she says dismissively, after a moment’s thought.

“Right, _that’s_ what’s too easy,” Athos mutters, impassiveness giving way to real annoyance. 

Milady opens her mouth to say something else snarky and cruel but restrains herself again, apparently deciding that the time for a bickering contest is when they’re not skulking down shadowy halls trying to find a safe full of blackmail material. “Here,” she says after a minute, “This corridor, I think.”

“Wait,” Aramis whispers, hearing it. “Someone’s coming.”

They all glance at each other for a fraction of a second, and then leap into action quickly and quietly. Aramis goes for the door directly behind him, d’Artagnan and Porthos piling in after him. Milady and Athos disappear in another direction. Aramis scans the room for a hiding spot, and chooses under the bed. It’s a traditional spot, and hardly the first time he’s hidden beneath one – hmm, come to think of it, Porthos may have a point about his choice of lovers. But the heart wants what it wants, after all, and it’s hardly Aramis’s fault his heart always picks girls in complicated situations with men who don’t deserve them.

Porthos closets himself in the wardrobe, and after letting out a silent but long-suffering sigh, d’Artagnan squeezes himself behind a bookshelf. It looks painful, and Aramis is happy he chose the better option. There aren’t really any more hiding spaces, so it’s a good thing the other two went elsewhere, though Aramis is a little concerned they might kill each other if they spend any more time together. Certainly they looked close to it yesterday. Something about Milady just seems to infuriate Athos. But then, he’d quite liked that Larroque woman, from what Aramis remembers, so perhaps that’s no surprise.

He tenses as the security guard comes into the room, but the man gives only a cursory look around. For a second, Aramis is surprised at his clear disinterest, but then he realises that the guard isn’t looking for people breaking and entering – this is a bedroom, after all. He’s just checking if there’s a couple he needs to turf out. It’s likely any checks of the area around their goal will be a little more thorough.

Luckily, there’s no security cameras inside the house – apparently Rochefort considers his privacy too important to want them around. Or, more likely, he doesn’t want there to be proof of his own crimes that any of his security guards could easily use to blackmail him with. So far Porthos hasn’t pointed out any alarms either. But then, with this many security guards, perhaps he doesn’t need them. If there wasn’t a party going on right now they wouldn’t have had a chance of getting this far without being seen.

Aramis counts to sixty before moving again, just to be sure, and Porthos opens the wardrobe door at the same time.

“Brings back memories,” he says, giving Aramis a cheeky grin.

“Yes, for me as well,” Aramis says, lifting his eyes to heaven as if in contemplation of those memories.

“Can you help me out?” d’Artagnan says, voice muffled. “I think I’m stuck.”

After they’ve retrieved d’Artagnan from behind the bookshelf, and promised with great solemnity and complete dishonesty not to tell Constance about it, it’s time to go find the others. Hopefully the two of them haven’t been caught, since they need Milady. Aramis doesn’t much fancy the idea of wandering around this place examining every painting of a girl, especially since every painting here seems to be of a girl, from what he’s seen. There’s no other obvious unity of style – watercolours, oils, pastels, acrylics, classical, impressionist, realist, it’s all there, it’s just also all young women, ranging from about ten to their late teens. There’s something eerie about it, the line up of pale, pretty, blue-eyed blondes staring down. It’s like a row of sad Alice in Wonderlands watching their every move.

Aramis sighs when he sees they haven’t emerged by themselves. “You two take that way, I’ll take this one,” he says. “Try five doors, and if you haven’t found them by then, we’ll have to move on.”

The first door there’s no one there, and when he whispers “Athos?” questioningly there’s no response. However, when he opens the second door, he raises an eyebrow, abruptly even more impressed with this new side of his friend.

Athos has Milady de Winter up against the wall, kissing her passionately, his leg inserted roughly between hers so that she’s basically riding it, the skirt of her dress rucked up nearly to her underwear and one thin strap pulled halfway off her shoulder. There’s something almost savage in the way he’s holding her, one hand twisted in her hair hard enough to crush the flowers there, the other white-knuckled on her hip. Judging by her response, she seems to be enjoying it immensely, rubbing herself against him like a cat in heat and moaning into his mouth, hands clawing viciously at the back of his shirt like she’s trying to tear through it.

Aramis grins. It was wonderful enough to think Athos could never again mock him for the accidental tango classes. But this? Athos may never again be able to mock him, period.

X_X_X_X

It’s the closeness which does it, of course.

She’s the first one through the door and she notices immediately there’s only one place in the room to hide, a big wardrobe up against the wall, unless one of them wants to try climbing up the chimney while the fire’s going. So she grabs Athos’s arm and steers him into it in front of her without missing a beat, pulling at the door so it swings shut behind them. He doesn’t make any objection, and so then they’re standing there, pressed to each other silently, trapped, her back against his front, both facing the door.

She can feel every inhale and exhale of his breath against her, so she can feel when it picks up just a little. Her own follows suit, and suddenly she’s absurdly conscious of how close he is, of the warmth of him pressed all along her back, of how easy it would be for him to drop his head a bit so that his mouth is on her neck – or for him to just move his hands up so that they’re on her hips instead of just hovering so close she can feel the heat of them – or to just pull her dress up a bit and settle against her more fully. She twitches her hips without quite meaning to and feels him stirring against her lower back and nearly gasps at it.

His hands land on her waist to still her movement, tightening in warning, and he drops his head, but not quite to her skin the way she wants – instead he breaths, “ _Stop_ ,” commandingly into her ear. 

His hot breath striking her bare neck and the shell of her ear makes her shiver, but she tries to shift a little so she’s not pressing against him quite as much, all too aware that this is affecting her as much as him. Unfortunately, to shift she has to move, and to him it must feel like she’s deliberately rubbing herself against him. He makes a choked little noise and he’s definitely hard now.

“Don’t be a bitch,” he growls into her ear, trying to move back.

“It’s a small fucking closet,” she whispers, incensed. “Do you think you’re _my_ first choice to be stuck in here with?” In one way, of course, an entirely too lustful way, he is. In another, he’s the worst person to be close to, because sooner or later, she’ll have to move away, and she doesn’t want to move away, and she _really_ doesn’t want to deal with being uncomfortably aroused the rest of the evening. 

“I’d be honoured just to be somewhere on the list,” he says, and now there’s something really dark in his tone. “But then, I gather it’s a _very_ long one.”

“Call me a slut one more time, Athos, I _dare_ you,” she says, danger in every word. Before she can stop herself, she’s squirming around to face him in the dark. It leaves her feeling too defenceless with him surrounding her from behind that way, feeling his breath on her neck. She wants to be able to stare him down, to glare at him properly.

“And you’ll do what?” he says once she’s facing him, and now his face is only an inch from hers in the darkness, and oh, that’s worse. Her breasts are against his chest, soft curves pressed against hard muscle. She can feel her nipples starting to draw tight in response and his erection is even more evident now. Her breath stutters.

“Do you really want to find out?” she manages to say mockingly, daring him again, tilting her chin so that her lips are even closer to his, so that he can feel every word she says as a puff of air against his face. If he moves even slightly, his mouth will be on hers.

She can see him blink, considering it, and even with so little light she can see his eyes darken at the threat. He moves impossibly closer, so that she can feel his lips against hers as they form the words. “Maybe I do.” His voice drops lower, to that tone that makes her feel a clenching need between her legs. “ _Slut_.”

Her blood heats even further at the murmured insult, and she responds entirely too predictably. She yanks at his white shirt, forcing his mouth onto hers fully, swallowing his gasp and her own. He surges against her in response, devouring her, exploring her, kissing her with a breathtaking fierceness. It’s not even really a kiss, it’s a battle, each of them biting and sucking and clawing at each other in their sudden need, fighting for control of the kiss, control of the moment. She _will_ win.

He tries to slam her back against the wall, forgetting it’s a door, and they half fall out of the closet, pulling their lips away from each other gasping. Before their minds can clear, though, she winds the fingers of one hand through his hair to draw him to her again and bites at his neck, teeth scraping across his skin as she _twists_ his hair sharply and he groans out loud. His hands move to grope at her ass, pushing her harder against his erection, and the feel of the friction in all the right places makes her arch against him, lips finding his once more.

She stumbles backwards until she finds a wall to lean against so she doesn’t have to rely on her suddenly-weak legs, pulling him with her by his shirt, never breaking the kiss, and then he slots his leg between hers and she rests her weight a bit on it, rubbing against him, the feel of his strong thigh against the intersection of her legs making her mindless. Their shared, urgent movements push the silk of her dress against her wetness, sliding and rasping slickly, and she moans against his mouth and surges against him to feel more of it. 

She bites his lower lip nearly hard enough to draw blood and he fists a hand in her hair as punishment, pulling at it so there’s a sting of pain feeding the pleasure. His other hand finds a place on her hip to hold her still so he can grind against her wetness, and she digs her nails into his back to spur him on, and that’s when the door opens, right when they’re on the verge of getting off just from rubbing up against each other fully-clothed like fucking teenagers.

It takes them both far too long to notice, of course, each lost in the morass of heat and raw need, grinding mindlessly against each other, hands clawing, mouths all teeth and tongue. But even though her eyes are slitted with pleasure, Milady realises after a few moments that the room is more lit up than before, and Athos must notice it too, and their movements slow. She can still feel the heat in her blood rising to meet his, but the cold light of the outside world reminds her exactly who they are and what they’re doing, shocking her into awareness. She pulls away and opens her eyes more fully to find Athos staring at her in the same confused, dazed way she’s staring at him, pulled so rudely out of their little world of red hot lust. 

There’s the sound of someone loudly clearing their throat, and they both look up, Milady letting go of her claw-like grip on Athos’s shirt as the same time as he slowly straightens so that she’s no longer quite straddling his leg. She pushes him a decorous step backwards so she can’t feel the evidence of his arousal pressing against her hip anymore, trying to calm her breathing, fixing her dress fussily.

“We -” Athos says, and then stops, immediately stumped.

“We thought you were the security guard and this was the best cover we had,” Milady says smoothly. It would be much more believable if they weren’t both flushed, breathing shakily, and desperately trying to collect themselves, but it’s the best she’s got. “A couple looking for a room. Makes sense.”

“Right. Sure.” Aramis is sporting a huge, shit-eating grin.

“Let’s just go,” Athos growls.

“I’ve heard hate sex is supposed to be out of this world,” Aramis whispers to Athos as they head down the corridor, sounding gleeful. “Apart from the occasional indignant smack, it’s not really my style, but I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense for you.”

“Would you _stop_?” Athos says, and it comes out more of a plea than a command. His eyes slide to her, and then his jaw sets and he looks away again, apparently infuriated by the sight of her. Or, more likely, by what he wants to do to her. He closes his eyes for a moment like he just can’t stand it and Milady feels a surprising pang of hurt.

Aramis blinks, clearly realising that Athos’s grouchiness isn’t caused by embarrassment or sexual frustration but by something more painful. He glances at her in confusion, and then back at Athos, and his smile dies. “Alright then,” he says.

Well, that’s good, at least. At this point, Milady has a fervent desire to just get this over with, go home, and return to pretending she doesn’t give a damn about her ex-husband. It’s bad enough that she’s having trouble walking normally, the churn of unsatisfied desire making her irritable and on edge, without a discussion about that fact being held two feet away. Do they not realise she can hear them?

She finds her gaze wandering to Athos again. That scowl shouldn’t be attractive, and yet, it is. She licks her lips without meaning to. Fuck, maybe she should just pull him into a room before the night’s over and get him on his knees for her, resolve at least one problem.

No. She has important things to do. She’s not some lovesick idiot ruled by her hormones. She’s Milady de Winter.

D’Artagnan blinks when he sees them, confused. “Did you have to fight the guard?”

“What? No,” Athos says curtly.

“But – I mean – your lip -” He gestures. Athos’s lower lip does look pretty swollen, now he’s drawn attention to it.

“He fell on his face getting out of his hiding spot,” Milady says immediately, tone as mocking as it would be if that had actually happened. She doesn’t really care about d’Artagnan’s opinion, but Athos does, and he’ll be horrified, and they’ll want to discuss things and work things out, and – well, that just goes back to her previous point about getting this fucking task over with already and getting out.

“Well, he fell on _someone’s_ face, anyway,” Aramis says, but this time so quietly Milady is the only one who hears him. Since they’re at the back, no one else sees the rude gesture she makes in response either, but he grins again.

They let her to the front of their little group when she clears her throat meaningfully, and she leads them straight to the room she knows Rochefort keeps most of his valuables in. She noticed it the first time she was there, the painting just a tenth of an inch too far out from the wall. She always found meetings with Rochefort a bit on the boring side, and would prowl around the room, leaving Armand to do most of the talking – that was the way he preferred it, and it stopped her from mocking Rochefort, which was always an irresistible temptation.

The door’s locked, so she reaches down to her shoes, removes one of the heels for a moment, and slides out her set of lockpicks from it, causing Athos to raise his eyebrows in surprise. Porthos, reaching into his jacket for his own set, shrugs and lets her get on with it. She thinks regretfully that she probably should have let him do it just to get an idea of how good he is at this, to add another data point to her mental list of the Musketeers’ skills and vulnerabilities, but there’s really not much reason to right now – Richelieu’s gone, after all, and her job with him. She could restart the firm, she supposes, since she did technically own part of it by the end and he may have left her the rest (she’ll know more when the estate settles), but her heart isn’t really in the work anymore. Richelieu might’ve been a bastard who didn’t care about anything besides money, power, his pet cat, his unfaithful girlfriend, clever speeches, and being the smartest person in any given room, but he was still an excellent employer and she’s not sure she could continue without him. Not to mention that all the lost files will somewhat cramp her style. Someday she’ll get Rochefort back for that one, the bastard.

The lock’s pretty simple, and she has it open in moments, returning her lockpicks to the hidden hollow in her shoe. The room hasn’t changed at all since the last time she was in it, and – ah. There’s the safe.

The painting it’s behind is of a pretty woman rising from a seashell, apparently painted by someone who felt inspired by Botticelli’s Venus but liked blondes better than redheads. She pries it off the wall easily, commenting under her breath, “ _Such_ a male fantasy.”

“Aphrodite? Well, yeah. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?” Porthos replies, surprising her. “Goddess of love and lust and all that.”

“I meant that she’s a woman with no past at all,” Milady says. She doesn’t look at Athos, but she can see the way he shifts on his feet and grits his teeth out the corner of her eye. “Emerging from the ocean just for them, perfect and untouched.”

“Actually, I prefer women who’ve been around the block a few times,” Aramis murmurs. When she turns her head to look at him, he raises his hands hurriedly and adds, “Not you, of course! God, no.”

She rolls her eyes and returns her attention to the safe. It’s a large safe, one of the best on the market of its type, climate controlled, fireproof, and set in the wall. A smaller safe they might be able to break out and just take the whole thing, but this one isn’t going anywhere. It looks very professional, with its electronic keypad humming slightly. She regards it calculatingly.

“I’ve never actually seen a real safe before,” d’Artagnan says. 

“That’s ’cause you skipped being a regular cop thanks to your ‘potential’,” Porthos says with an eye roll and a grin. “Uniforms see a lot of the crappy ones in home invasions. Never seen one like this before, though.”

“Do we need to be quiet so you can listen to the clicks?” Aramis asks, since apparently he thinks the most expensive safes in the world still have tumblers.

“The clicks of an electronic code?” Porthos asks sceptically.

“ _Can_ you do this?” Athos says in an undertone.

She rolls her eyes yet again. Apparently they’ve all been picturing her as a safe-cracker from an eighties heist movie. They probably expect her to have a stethoscope or something. Instead, she studies the safe for a few more moments, removes her earrings, and holds one up against the electronic keypad.

“What’re you -” Aramis asks, as she moves the other earring in a stroking motion along where the knows the right wires are. The safe makes a clicking noise and she opens it easily.

They all stare at her, then at the safe, then at her again.

“They’re rare earth magnets,” she says patiently, slowing her words as if she’s explaining this to a small child. “If you put them in the perfect places for the specific safe and move them just right, it confuses the electronics without putting the safe into lockdown mode. Now if you excuse me, I think it’s time I made my exit.”

“Don’t want to stick around and see what we find?” Porthos asks.

“Don’t want to be a suspected criminal caught in a room with an open safe, no. I feel like that would rather ruin your claim that you miraculously found it open. It’s going to be hard enough to sell that lie as it is.”

Athos twitches when she calls it a lie, but replies after a moment, saying, “The security guards will probably confirm it wasn’t open on their rounds, so it might be best if we do say we think the place was robbed and that’s why we found it open.”

“We were just investigating,” d’Artagnan agrees. “Doing our jobs. We saw a crime in progress and had to check if anything was missing. I like it.”

“In which case I’m an even better suspect,” she points out. “So I’m going to go try and get an alibi, if that’s all right with you. Maybe I’ll spill a drink on myself in front of half the place, end up escorted out by Rochefort and his security. That should get me quite a few witnesses who can confirm I wasn’t off robbing the place.”

She leaves without looking back, heart thumping too loudly in her chest, previous distractions all but forgotten. She didn’t expect to feel guilty about this, and she doesn’t – they made it far too easy, and Athos at least has it coming, after all. But she also doesn’t feel the thrill she expected to feel at fooling him, at deliberately living down to his expectations, at hurting him. Oh well, perhaps the thrill will come once she’s finished her mission. Right now she just feels disappointed that it’s unlikely she’ll get to screw Athos as well as screwing him over before disappearing into the night with (almost) everything she wants. And if, in addition to that desire, she feels some grief, anger, hurt, longing, and perhaps even regret, she’s certainly not going to dwell on it. The file she’s looking for is the important thing.

Let the Musketeers pore through all the valuables Rochefort owns, all the most expensive art, the jewellery, the personal documents. Rochefort might be a madman, but he’s not a fool, and he doesn’t keep sketchy blackmail material with his legal, fully insured goods in his insurance-company inspected safe. The evidence is elsewhere, in another safe, a smaller, better-hidden one.

She just needs to grab it before either the security guards find the Musketeers, or the Musketeers realise there’s nothing useful in that safe.


	4. Ball and Chain

He’s been suspicious ever since Milady turned up asking for help, but it was a general, vague suspicion, only there because she was. There was nothing really to base it on. He’s realising now that the reason he ignored the occasional stirring of more specific misgivings was because they were lost in that atmosphere of general distrust.

What triggers this line of thought is Porthos saying in an impressed tone, “Damn good luck she knows how to break into safes. Not sure if Flea could’ve managed that.”

Athos flashes back to her lounging on his couch a couple of days ago, smugness in her eyes, telling him that any safe he owned would be beneath her skills. From the look of it, she was right –

And that’s when it hits him, ringing like a gong, several little moments coming together. Why say that? It seemed a little disjointed at the time, the way she led to it, but it fit broadly into their conversation, and they’d often held non-linear conversations back when they were married, jumping easily from topic to topic. But there was something deliberate about it.

She was reminding him she could break into safes. Or maybe she didn’t know it was on her file at the precinct and that Porthos would suggest her because of that, and so she thought she had to inform them she could break into safes. Perhaps the whole reason she broke into his apartment was to remind him how good she was at breaking and entering. Proving her skills.

Reasonable to assume someone who didn’t trust technology would keep his secrets in a safe, he supposes. Except that first day she also dropped into conversation that she knew Rochefort’s house. A good guess, or something else? A safe in Rochefort’s house and she’d all but told them she was the best person to help them get into it, but they hadn’t known the evidence was in a safe in his house until Vargas told them…

…And she sent them to Vargas, with that little story, casually dropping a perfectly-remembered name from months ago, pretending confusion when they leapt on it. She said she had never heard of him, but Vargas said he met Richelieu once or twice, and it suddenly occurs to Athos that it’s highly uncharacteristic of Richelieu not to have a file on everyone he knows, however insignificant the acquaintance. And then Milady knew exactly where this safe was in Rochefort’s house, and if so, why not mention it as a possible place to look on the first day? Because she knew they’d be suspicious if she led them right to it. She let them follow a short trail of breadcrumbs instead.

“Another painting,” Aramis says, voice muffled from his head being stuck in the safe. “I never thought I’d become sick of attractive blondes, but I’m getting there.”

“Poor Ana,” Porthos jokes quietly. “You can give her this – jewelled cross? – as a parting gift. Huh, never pegged Rochefort as the religious kind.”

D’Artagnan’s at the door, keeping watch with more professionalism than Aramis and Porthos are currently showing. Of course, Athos is worst of all, because all he’s doing is standing stock still, mind racing, not even breathing, finally figuring it out. He knows her. He should’ve have realised right away. Fucking hell, he _knows_ her.

“Stop,” he says harshly.

“Right, sorry, we’ll pipe down,” Porthos says absent-mindedly, still searching through jewels.

“No. _Stop_ ,” Athos says, and this time his quiet panic successfully gets through to them. “Stop everything. Get back to the party. _Now_. 

They don’t ask a single question in response. Porthos and Aramis look at each other, blink, and then start loading everything back into the safe even more quickly than they’d emptied it. D’Artagnan turns to look at Athos in confusion, then heads out the door at a trot to more thoroughly check the corridors for security. He returns with the all-clear in seconds.

All right, so she might not have set off an alarm. Of course, on the other hand she might have and security might be just about to turn to corner and find them.

“She’s double-crossed us,” Athos says shortly, even though none of them asked for an explanation. That’s all he needs to say. They move back through the corridors in total silence.

Then Athos stops stock still again, breathes out slowly through his nose. No, they can’t do this. He doesn’t know why she played them or what she was after, and the unknown is dangerous. If they’d been caught, it’s unlikely the security guards would have really hurt them, but not impossible. Without any real evidence to use against Rochefort, he definitely could have made a complaint against them, getting them reprimanded, put on probation, or even fired. She risked their jobs and their safety and he has no clue why, and however spiteful Milady can be, she normally has a reason for what she does.

“I’m going to find her,” he whispers harshly. That he’s going to fucking wring her neck for this goes unsaid. He’s sick to death of being played by his bitch of an ex-wife. He may as well be a piano as far as she’s concerned, she finds it so easy. No, not a fucking piano, a fool, a gullible fool – a short skirt, a sultry smile, her hand on his fucking zipper for half a minute, and his brain just disappears. She swamped him with anger, guilt, desire, and the memory of old love, and it distracted him so thoroughly he let her use him again.

Well, no more.

“We know where she lives,” d’Artagnan says.

“No. I’m finding her _now_. You head back to everyone else, get alibis.”

“Athos -” d’Artagnan says, looking both concerned and confused.

Aramis, bless him, just blinks and then nods once. He knows that tone of voice. He’s heard it enough.

“We’ll be back at the party then,” Porthos says, voice low. “You get caught, just say you were trying to find the bathroom, always works in movies.” They all know it won’t work here, but he appreciates the thought.

Athos nods in return and then stalks away down the hall, barely caring if he runs into any security – in his current mood, he’s perfectly capable of knocking every single man in the place out if it means he finds Milady. 

He slams open door after door, and when he slams open the right one, he’s almost as surprised as she is.

Milady jerks at the noise, nearly dropping the folder she’s examining.

“Athos,” she says with a sigh, relaxing into a smirk. It would take someone who knew her extremely well to know that she’s not relaxed at all, that it’s all a cover. Unfortunately for both of them, he knows her extremely well – in some ways, at least. “Of course.”

“You overplayed your hand, _Milady_ ,” he snarls.

“Subtlety is wasted on you lot,” Milady says. “At least, that’s been my experience.” 

She looks unbelievably beautiful, the lines of her face gilded by the nearby fire, lips slightly curved, eyes considering. He can see the jump of her pulse against the choker she’s wearing. Twenty minutes ago, however hard he would have tried to control himself, he would have been able to think of nothing but touching the silk of her skin again, capturing those curved lips with his own, pushing into the wet heat of her. The lust he feels isn’t completely extinguished by his fury – unfortunately, it never has been – but he’s much more in control now. He hates being played, and nothing disperses the fog of desire for Athos as quickly as being made to feel like a fool.

He nods at the papers in her hand. “I don’t suppose you’re going to just give me whatever that is.”

“It wouldn’t help you.”

“My God.” He closes his eyes for a moment, trying to contain his rage. “Richelieu really did die of natural causes, didn’t he? You just wanted something in Rochefort’s house, and you knew if you led us by the nose, we’d be the perfect distraction.”

“Close,” she admits.

“No, not a distraction,” he says, as he understands. “You didn’t want a distraction, you wanted an _invite_. Rochefort knows you’re after whatever this is, you’d never get close most times, but this party was the perfect opportunity. You didn’t give a damn about the rest of us, we were irrelevant, you just needed Aramis to convince Ana de Bourbon to let you into the place. For fuck’s sake, Anne. You played us.”

She came to them right before the party, too. He even _thought_ when Aramis said there was one on that it was highly convenient timing. Right before the party, so that they couldn’t get the lab results back, so she could put off showing them the computer Rochefort’s people supposedly hacked until after with her bullshit excuses, so they wouldn’t have time to second-guess their plan or find someone more trustworthy than her to help with it.

“But not as well as I thought, sadly,” she says, with a put-upon sigh. Despite her theatrics, she’s as tense as a coiled spring, ready to leap into action if he does. He doesn’t know what she’s planning to do though. Does she have a knife, a gun? Surely he would have found it before, there wasn’t a place on her he didn’t put his hands. Unless she’s hiding poison in her heart-shaped choker pendant the way she was hiding magnets in the matching earrings and lockpicks in her heels.

And… Anne’s not a killer, is she? A liar, certainly, a cheater, a gold-digger, a terrible human being, but she wouldn’t _kill_ him. Besides anything else, the hassle from killing cops is enormous.

“Is there no deception you won’t stoop to?” he demands. “You used the death of someone you claim to care about -”

“And you’re what, stunned by that? Come on, Athos, you keep saying how you _know_ me,” she mocks him. “And if you think Armand wouldn’t have used my death if the situation were reversed, you didn’t know him either.”

“The folder, Anne,” he says.

He sees her eyes dart towards the fire and realises exactly what she’s planning to do less than a second before she does it. He’s diving for the flying folder the moment before it hits the fire, but she yanks his arm away, throwing him off, and the paper catches. He swears and yanks it off the fire and stamps on it, but it continues charring away for a while as he attempts to put it out. By the time there’s only smoke and no fire, the papers inside are so burned he’s not even sure if he should be touching them in case it makes them fall apart completely. But they’ve just been stamped on and are still more or less together, so after a second he decides it’s probably fine, stowing the whole thing in his jacket. It burns his shirt and the skin below, but he barely notices.

“We’ll get something off them,” he says savagely.

“I doubt it,” Milady says, but her gaze darts like that of a trapped animal, and she licks her lips as she says it, betraying her nerves. Of course they’ll manage to find something, eventually. Technology is an amazing thing and if a piece of paper isn’t burned literally to cinders you can generally get something off it. The inner layers will have survived, the outer layers will be salvageable, and now he knows that whatever is in these papers is something she’s afraid of.

“It’s evidence against you, isn’t it?” he asks. He raises his service weapon, aware he won’t fire it, but wanting the comfort of holding it on her anyway. “Not blackmail material on Richelieu, or information about Rochefort’s activities.”

She doesn’t say anything.

He sighs, suddenly weary, sore, old beyond his years. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of criminal activity.”

Her rage shocks him with its suddenness. “I’m under arrest? Of course I fucking am. Let’s pretend that’s what you want right now, Athos, that all you want it to _arrest_ me. Let’s pretend it’s all about justice, about what’s _right_ , that it isn’t personal.”

“It _is_ about what’s right,” he says emotionlessly.

“And while we’re at it, let’s pretend that I’m the _only_ one in this room who deserves to be arrested,” she spits, continuing as if he hadn’t spoken. He knows she’s not talking about breaking in tonight, not talking about bending the rules. He knows exactly what she’s talking about it and it hits him like a sledgehammer. “Arrest me if you want, but at least admit it. You're not innocent here.”

“I – I wasn’t in control of myself,” he says, voice suddenly choked.

“No, you weren’t, were you?” she says, and the naked fury in her voice hurts, but worse than that is the way she reaches up to straighten the choker. The little metal heart almost glows in the firelight.

“I was drunk, I – and after what you did -”

He cuts off his own excuses. Because that’s what they are, excuses. He heard them a hundred times back when he was a beat cop called out to domestic disturbances.

It was normally a husband hitting a wife – not always, but nearly always. _I was drunk_ , they’d say, or _do you know what she said_ , or _I just lost control_. Back then he’d despised them utterly – well, he still does, he’s just added himself to that list as well. But back then he was also confused by them nearly as much as he was disgusted. The idea of him ever hurting his wife had been almost laughable. Until one day he went to surprise her at her workplace in the middle of the day and instead he was the one surprised, walking in on his wife going down on his brother.

Athos had just stared. Their heads had jerked up on his entry, Thomas’s expression of enjoyment slowly morphing to one of fear as he backed away, trying to fix himself up, cover himself. Anne’s oddly blank look turning to pure panic and horror in a heartbeat, face reddening as she dragged the back of her sleeve across her mouth roughly as if she were trying to wipe away what she’d done, already staggering to her feet and calling out to him, an edge of hysteria to her voice. They looked nearly as shocked as he was. Then he turned around and left, walking blindly out the door, completely stunned, utterly destroyed, unable to cope with any of it. He ignored their cries as they rushed after him, clothes in disarray, Anne’s make-up a smear across her tear-stained face, both of them talking over each other, trying to assign blame, trying to explain. He drove home in a fugue state. He changed the locks. He called his bank and cancelled Anne’s cards for his accounts. He sat in silence, the scene playing over and over again in his mind. He threw up. He wondered if he should call his brother’s fiancée but wasn’t able to summon enough energy to do it. He opened a bottle of scotch. He drank it. He opened another.

Thomas came around to the house almost immediately. Athos didn’t let him in. He tried not to listen while his brother yelled through the door that it was all Anne’s fault, that she wasn’t who Athos thought she was, that Anne wasn’t even her name, that she was a gold-digger and she’d seduced them both, that all he had to do was look into her background and he’d know exactly who she was. He hadn’t wanted to know. But he hadn’t been able to stop himself, so the next day he’d looked her up on the station computer, just the basic facts, and it turned out Anne de Breuil had existed for less than one month before he’d met her and fallen in love. There was no prior name listed. Thomas had been telling the truth. It didn’t make him hate his brother any less, but it did make him hate her more. The hatred and betrayal only worsened when she immediately moved in with his partner Remi, poisoning the one part of his life she hadn’t already wrecked: his work.

At the time he called it breaking and entering when he woke up still drunk one night weeks later to the sound of her efficiently going through all the drawers and retrieving the jewellery he’d given her, but she was still technically on the deed despite the changed locks, so it actually wasn’t. He screamed at her anyway. She kept trying to explain, but there was no explanation, and he told her what he thought of her, spewing out every slur and insult he could come up with, throwing the titbits Thomas had told him at her like knives, bringing up her new living situation to try and shame her for it. Then she got angry too and started screaming right back. He just wanted her to shut up, and his words weren’t doing it, and he was drunk and furious, and every time he looked at her he remembered her with his brother, imagined her with Remi, saw her betraying him over and over again, and then without any kind of rational thought at all he was slamming her against the wall and his hands were around her throat.

He wants to say that she’s fine – she is fine, in the sense that she’s still alive. But Athos has been to enough crime scenes for second-degree murders and manslaughters to know that the difference between choking a person practically to unconsciousness and killing them is only a small amount of pressure, only a few seconds, only one unknown fact. If Anne had been suffering some undiagnosed health problem, if he had squeezed just a little bit harder, if he’d been just slightly drunker and not realised how much damage he was doing… she’d be dead. And her throat, as well – he went for her throat. He may not really know how she got that scar, but he knows how she feels about it, knows that he couldn’t have come up with a crueller attack.

How can she stand to be in the same room with him? Lately, he’s been asking that question the other way around instead, so angry with her he hasn’t wanted to remember how guilty he’s felt since that night, how much it wrecked his own perception of himself as a good man and how impossible it is to admit, even five years later. He can’t forgive what she did, the disgust it still fills him with, the hurt and betrayal that rots his insides. The memory of walking in on the love of his life sleazily pleasuring his brother still makes him so uncontrollably furious and nauseous that imbibing lethal levels of scotch is the only solution when it crosses his mind. But even with all that anger, he also can’t pretend any more that his response was in any way acceptable, not with that look in her eyes.

Cheating isn’t a crime. Lying isn’t a crime. Ripping someone’s still beating heart out of their chest and crushing it in front of them feels like it should be a crime, but again, it’s not actually illegal. What he did crossed a line.

He lowers his gun. It’s more a symbol than anything. “Go,” he says hoarsely.

Confusion flickers across her face. “What?”

“You heard me. _Go_. I’ll turn these papers over tomorrow morning. You have at least twelve hours before we have anything on you, maybe more. That’s more than enough time for you to pull another disappearing act, and since I’m guessing you know what these papers are, you know exactly how much you’ll be wanted by the law once we’ve looked at them. You can get out. But if I ever see you again, you’re under arrest.”

She stares at him. “But… the law…” Now she seems beyond confusion, almost offended by what he’s saying, like it’s yet another betrayal in a long line of them.

He gives a sort of half shrug.

“There were a couple of other folders in there,” she says abruptly, jerking her head towards the tiny safe he hadn’t even consciously noticed. “Maybe they can help you somehow.” 

Their argument felt loud, but it mustn’t have been – no one’s come to check this room yet. Anne gives him one last strange look and then she’s gone, hurrying out the door as if she’s already being chased.

Athos looks down at his jacket, where the half-burned papers are stowed. They’ve cooled now but they still feel like they’re burning him. He shouldn’t have let her go. He couldn’t have arrested her. He can’t believe she’s done this to him again. He’s desperately guilty and furiously angry at the same time, and somehow it’s averaging out at numbness. The only thing he really feels is the ardent desire for a strong drink.

X_X_X_X

Milady is shaking by the time she lets herself into her apartment. He didn’t arrest her. He didn’t _arrest_ her. It makes no sense. Athos and his friends bend the law now, it seems, in pursuit of some imagined greater good, but she never imagined he’d bend the law for _her_. He’d said he was a different man now, but she hadn’t believed him, and it turned out she was wrong – five years ago, even loving her as he had, he wouldn’t have paused. What changed? Is it the influence of his friends, his new job in the taskforce? Is it the guilt of what he did back then? Or did she break him, really break him, with what she did, and now he believes in nothing, not even the law he used to see as a shining light in the sky?

 _He’ll arrest you, if you go to him_ , Thomas had said five years ago. _You know that_. And she had known that, so she hadn’t gone to him, even when she should have. Her survival was the most important thing and she knew she wouldn’t survive her time in jail. She knew what was waiting for her there. And the thought of Athos looking at her with betrayal in his eyes when he realised how she’d lied to him – but she’d gotten to see that anyway, of course. Half-dressed, sobbing, panicking, racing after him, realising too late that she’d rather take her chances in jail after all then lose him so horrifically.

Her apartment isn’t safe now. The police will come for her by midday tomorrow, if Athos’s word can be trusted. Even if it can’t, Milady has her own insurance policies – she picks up her phone and checks the bug she put at the station, but it’s nothing but silence, they haven’t gotten back from the party yet, clearly. She tries the bugs she placed at Rochefort’s without much hope, and hears the crackling noises she expects. His bug scramblers are just as good as hers and it seems he didn’t miss any of the awkward corners she checked just in case. Neither of them will track her by the bugs, she’s sure. She’s not a technological genius in the general sense, but she’s the best there is at the tricks she uses. After all, there’s no point in using them if you’re not.

So: time to go. Not out of the country, that’s too risky, and this will always be her home. But out of town, certainly.

It causes her a pang, even though it shouldn’t. Richelieu is dead and no longer able to protect her or pay her, Rochefort will be out for her blood now he has no leverage on her, Sarazin’s probably narrowed his search down to the city or will very soon, and Athos and his friends will track her down if she stays. But – Athos will track her down if she stays.

She should be scared of him. And on one level, she is. He’s dangerous to her. But the main danger from him has never been physical, and even when his hands were wrapped around her throat, she knew that. The shock of that violent act wrecked her at the time, the one person she trusted above everyone attacking her, and she’s never forgiven it entirely; but she’s experienced enough violence in her life that she knows when someone's really trying to kill her and when it's just an accident. He didn't want to come so close to doing real, irreversible damage, and even at the time his face was so shocked and horrified when he stepped back she knew it wasn't on purpose. Of course, if he ever tries to touch her like that again, she’ll castrate him with her bare hands and call it a day.

The rest of it was much worse. Him refusing to see her, speaking to Thomas instead, choosing to believe his brother over her, not allowing any kind of explanation or apology to pass her lips. Him cutting her off from their home, their shared accounts and belongings, so that she was left scrabbling and poor again, having to seize any opportunity she could. Him calling her the worst names, the most hurtful, the most terrible, the most disgusting things he could think of, hammering them into her flesh like nails. Dreaming of him, missing him, running from him and, in one way, getting nowhere. She’s never stopped hating him, but she’s also never stopped loving him or wanting him, and that’s the most humiliating of all of it.

Being close to him for a few days was strange and horrible and wonderful. It was taunting reminder of a past she couldn’t have back. She did her best to make it that for him as well, because she never was a fan of suffering alone or in silence, but it hadn’t helped.

It was only that she loved him so _very_ much, back then. Staying in one place under one name was a huge risk, but she’d taken it because she’d met him. Marrying a cop was possibly the stupidest thing someone on the run could do, but she’d done that as well. It was back before she had the protection of the Cardinal (as Richelieu had been nicknamed by the criminal underground) and when she was recognised there was no one to hide behind. There was no defence for her stupidity, except that it had all seemed worth it at the time, because she had him. She’d built a house of cards and it had inevitably collapsed.

Is she required to forgive him now? She can’t. He’s put his career on the line for her, certainly, and probably betrayed his friends and his own sense of morality by letting her go (for all he knows there’s proof of murder in that burnt folder), but that doesn’t undo what he did. It’s not just that she hasn’t loved anyone else in the five years since they imploded so violently, it’s that she hasn’t trusted anyone. She’s not sure she ever can again, a belief that Armand, a treacherous man but an excellent mentor, had always been very approving of.

She also can’t deny that this has blunted her anger in one way, though. Knowing that he feels guilty, that he’s still suffering the way she is, that on some level he’s still in love with her even if he doesn’t know it, has made some tight knot of fury inside her relax slightly. He didn’t destroy her and get away unscathed. He tore himself apart as well. She wonders if that will stop now that he feels he’s done something to make amends for coming very close to seriously hurting her five years ago. The idea of him forgiving himself for that just pisses her off. She hates righteous people, and she hates feeling like she’s the one in the wrong, and she hates that this makes it seem that he’s the one with the upper hand again – like he’s benevolently letting her go and finding some kind of peace while she has to flee with her tail between her legs, the villain of the piece. Him finding change and growth and closure while she doesn’t get any of it. But what can she do? She’s not going to jail.

She takes several deep breaths, and then makes the call. “Gallagher?”

He greets her with a grunt, which is typical.

“I’m getting out of town… for a while, anyway,” she says, doing her best to sound mildly amused. “Care to assist? You know I have the cash.”

X_X_X_X

“Where _is_ he?” d’Artagnan says, pacing the room again, anxious.

“He texted last night after the party that he was fine,” Porthos says. “I’m sure he’s still fine.”

D’Artagnan can tell he’s worried too, though. Athos might be cynical about their work, sometimes, but he takes it as seriously as any of them. He hasn’t called in sick, he hasn’t texted that he’s chasing up leads or some other work-related thing, but he’s not here. It’s unlike him. The last time he missed work was a year ago, and even then he sent an email saying it was flu. It wasn’t, judging by how much of a mess he looked when he finally turned up days later, but at least he’d bothered to come up with some excuse and let them know. This time, nothing.

“We should go to his house,” Aramis says, which is unlike him. Normally he respects Athos’s boundaries as much as Porthos does. It’s a staple of their long working relationship – Athos shares what he wants, and they listen when he does, but they don’t force anything. They all know something happened to make him dark and a bit untrusting, but they don’t know the details – a case gone very bad? A crooked partner? It could be any one of dozens of reasons, and their best guesses are mainly ripped from TV shows they liked.

When Porthos looks at Aramis in surprise, he shrugs. “Come on, you saw him last night. The past few days, even. He’s been a wreck.”

“Milady de Winter sure did a number on him,” Porthos comments.

“On all of us,” d’Artagnan says.

“Nah, I meant years ago. Whatever she did, it’s personal.” Porthos shrugs, certain of this.

“Do you wonder if -” d’Artagnan pauses. “I mean, when she pulled one over on me -”

“Now there’s a euphemism I haven’t heard before,” murmured Aramis. “I’m going to start using that.”

“I _mean_ , do you think she did the same to him? He figured out right away it was her,” d’Artagnan says. He hadn’t considered it before now, viewing the idea of Milady de Winter successfully seducing Athos as somewhere in the same realm of likelihood of Athos becoming a clown. But Porthos is right, the way he looks at her is so filled with anger it’s hard not to read it as personal. And for someone like Athos, who seems to view romantic feelings as a type of debilitating illness, falling for a disgusting trick like that would be ten times as galling as it was for d’Artagnan.

“Now I look back, it’s obvious he put a lot of effort into avoiding dealing with her whenever we crossed paths. He all but had a breakdown over the Larroque trial,” Aramis says. He pauses, like he’s considering saying something else, but decides not to. “So yes, I think ‘personal’ is a good description.”

“Alright, let’s go break his door down, then,” Porthos says with a grin that’s not nearly as carefree as normal.

“Sorry, have I caught you at a bad time?” Lemay says, entering the room and noticing they’re all preparing to leave.

“Uh, is it something quick?” Porthos asks.

“I just wanted you to know that I called in some favours and managed to expedite the tests,” Lemay says, “The lab should be able to get back to us tomorrow morning.”

“Ah, awkward,” Aramis says, not quite under his breath. When Lemay looks at him, he flashes the other man a bright smile. “We’ve received some… new information. It may not be a murder after all.”

“Possibly,” says Porthos. “I mean, we dunno. Athos didn’t really say what was going on. So it _might_ be a murder still.”

“Yes,” Lemay says, confused. “I thought that’s why we were doing the tests? To check?”

“It’s just it turns out the person who reported it might have had an ulterior motive,” d’Artagnan says, because it’s better than going with _is a manipulative bitch_. He gives Lemay a smile as well, but it turns out more manic than bright and Lemay looks concerned. “Anyway, we need to go now. We’ll see you around.” 

The worst thing about being the new guy (even after working with them for a _year_ ) is the constant jokes, but having to be the one in the back whenever there are three of them driving somewhere comes a close second. Especially since for some reason Porthos owns a car the size of a shoebox. D’Artagnan hunches in his seat, for once not wondering what this is doing to his back, instead focused on Athos.

He and Athos didn’t have the greatest first meeting, but it didn’t take long for him to realise Athos was the kind of cop he wanted to be. He’s commanding, intelligent, seems to know everything there is to know about police work, and has the kind of composure that d’Artagnan’s not sure he’ll ever manage to acquire. But now that composure seems to be visibly crumbling and it’s making him not just concerned, but uncomfortable. It’s apparent that he doesn’t understand Athos nearly as well as he thought he did.

If he and Constance had decided to have bridal parties at their wedding, Athos would absolutely be best man. They didn’t, so he’s not, but it still makes d’Artagnan feel left out that there’s something major going on with his friend and mentor and he has no clue what it is.

“Athos?” Aramis yells, hammering on the door. There’s no response. “All right, breaking the door down it is.”

Porthos grins at him. “As a former thief, here’s some advice.” He turns the doorknob and the door creaks open. “Always check if it’s actually locked first. You’d be surprised how many people forget to lock their doors.”

“Especially drunk ones,” mutters d’Artagnan, wrinkling his nose at the overpowering smell of scotch.

They file in. “Athos?” Aramis says again, and this time there’s a groan. He flicks on the light switch.

D’Artagnan winces at the sight of Athos. He’s on his back on the couch, still in last night’s clothes, but rather worse for wear. His eyes are shut and it’s difficult to tell if he’s even breathing. “Athos?” he says as well. He doesn’t even receive a groan in response.

“Come on, mate,” Porthos says, touching Athos lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t make us call an ambulance.”

Athos comes upright in a surge of sudden movement, eyes red and wild, grabbing for the nearby empty bottle. For a second it looks like he’ll break it over Porthos’s head, but then he appears to recognise him, and relaxes. “Porthos?” he slurs, squinting at him.

“My God, how much did he have?” Aramis wonders. “Still drunk at this hour? Splendid.”

“Watch out, I think he broke one, there’s glass everywhere,” d’Artagnan says.

“Everything everywhere,” Athos groans, then slumps back down again, apparently feeling he’s said something that explains it all.

“All right,” Porthos says, cracking his knuckles. “Time to get to work.”

D’Artagnan gets the best of the tasks at hand, sent out to fetch food for them all. Aramis makes his signature yet ever-changing hangover cure (ever-changing because it has to be made using only what’s in the sufferer’s kitchen – and in Athos’s case, that’s not much, and even less if you only count edible things). Meanwhile, lucky Porthos gets to go dunk Athos in water until he’s awake and cursing them all.

They install him back on the couch after drying him off. He makes it halfway through the bacon roll before he’s back in the bathroom throwing it up.

“This is rather putting me off my one,” Aramis says sadly, staring at his roll.

“Can I have it then?” Porthos says.

“No. It’s mine.”

Athos manages to eat the rest without losing any more of it, and he at least returns to coherency, if not sobriety. “What time is it?” he says, looking haggard.

“Uh, three,” Aramis says helpfully. “Work began at nine.”

“Oh,” Athos says. After a long pause, he starts struggling to get out of his jacket.

“If you’re feeling up to changing, a shower -” Porthos says encouragingly.

“No,” Athos says, and instead passes Porthos three folders. One looks like its been set on fire, run over by a bus, and then set on fire again.

“Thanks?” he says, confused, holding that one up to squint at it.

“Evidence against Milady de Winter,” Athos says, and closes his eyes again. “The burnt one.”

D’Artagnan blinks at him. “Does she know you have – whatever this is?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Then…” d’Artagnan’s brow creases. “Shouldn’t you have brought these to the station last night? Or maybe let the rest of us know? We could have at least placed someone at her house after you lost her.”

“I didn’t lose her,” Athos says, but then lets out a sudden burst of harsh, mirthless laughter, making them all flinch. “Or I suppose I did. My God.”

“I think you’re going to need to fill us in on what’s going on,” Aramis says carefully. “Now drink another glass of that hangover cure and stop being terrifying, please.”

Athos gulps half the glass down and turns green for a moment before regaining control. “I let her go,” he says finally. “We had an argument, and then I got this, and then I told her to go, so she left. That’s about it.”

“And yet, I still feel like there’s gaps in this story,” Aramis says, a little tightly.

“Must be my amazing insightfulness, but I’m thinking your relationship with Milady de Winter wasn’t always so -” Porthos searches for the right word and finds it. “Fucked up. So what happened? A case? She play you like she did d’Artagnan?”

Athos doesn’t answer, but his head turns for a moment, and they all follow his gaze. There’s a small square on the floor by the wall. More of the broken glass surrounds it. D’Artagnan moves over and grabs it, being careful of all the splinters.

It’s a framed photo, but the frame is broken, which at least explains all the glass shards. It looks like Athos threw it pretty hard. The photo inside takes a while to identify. For far too long a moment, d’Artagnan thinks it’s a stock photo, because neither of the people in it look like anyone he knows. Then he realises with an almost physical shock that he does know them, but not like this, never like this.

Athos, not just smiling but grinning, in casual clothing, looking relaxed, eyes crinkled in pure happiness. Leaning on him is Milady, but Milady as he’s never seen her, looking pretty and soft instead of dangerous and sharp, the same kind of casual clothes as Athos – maybe even his clothes, judging by the look of it. There’s nothing overtly passionate about their pose, but somehow it’s one of those photos that hits you in the gut with an emotion, every angle and line and colour somehow seeming to broadcast feelings that so that you can’t be unaffected by it. It’s unavoidable.

The way they’re leaning into each other, the expressions on their faces, the look in their eyes, the relaxed lines of their bodies… It looks like a photo of two people who are stupid in love, completely head over heels, absolutely, unmistakeably and undeniably A Couple, fully deserving of the capital letters. D’Artagnan hopes his wedding photos will be half as impactful, but even with the expensive photographer they hired, he’s not holding his breath. It’s the kind of un-posed photo that accidentally captures a moment perfectly, and those are one in a million, and can’t be manufactured.

Wordlessly, he passes it over to Porthos, who hisses through his teeth at it. Aramis looks over his shoulder and lets out a low whistle as well. “I see,” Aramis says, carefully avoiding further commentary. “So… not exactly what she did with d’Artagnan, then. Was it anything to do with a case?”

D’Artagnan opens his mouth to point out it must have been – he doesn’t think Milady does anything besides screw people over, it seems to be her hobby, job, social life and passion all in one. But he’s interrupted by Athos silently shaking his head. He looks back down at the photo, marvelling at Milady’s ability to look so in love, to pretend so hard. Even knowing what she is, it’s impossible for him to really find the dishonesty in her smile. You just have to know.

“It was before she worked for Richelieu,” Athos says after a while, curiously toneless. “She was my brother’s secretary, actually. I was a small town cop back then, and she never asked me more about my work than whether I’d had a good day. Not that there was anything too valuable I could say. Good thing my parents left me such an excessive amount of money, otherwise I suppose I would have had nothing at all to interest her at the time.”

D’Artagnan blinks. He knew Athos wasn’t poor, but he assumes the kind of money required to make someone like Milady look so uncharacteristically lovesick would have to be next level rich.

“How long did you date for?” Porthos asks, avoiding asking about the money. He reaches out sneakily and grabs the remains of Aramis’s roll, taking a bite. Porthos has a tendency to stress eat.

“We dated for three months,” Athos says, still completely toneless.

“Well, that’s a while, but not -” Aramis starts to say, a little relieved.

“And were married for fourteen,” Athos continues.

Porthos chokes dramatically on the roll. He nearly turns blue. Aramis pounds him on the back. D’Artagnan, meanwhile, stares open-mouthed at Athos. “ _What_?” he says finally. “You’re _married_?”

“Divorced,” Athos says, but winces at the word like it physically hurts to say. “Five years ago, just before I moved to the city and met you two.” He gestures weakly at Aramis and Porthos. “It wasn’t… amicable. At all.”

“We knew you were going through… something… at the time,” Aramis says tactfully. He shrugs when the rest of them look at him. “Only so many times you can watch a man down a whole bottle of whiskey before you realise he’s trying to drown _something_.”

“She take half of everything?” Porthos asks, still hoarse from choking. He gestures around the place, clearly trying for a little levity. “’Cause I have to say, none of this looks like her style.”

“What she took -” Athos starts. Swallows. Then starts again. “She didn’t get any of the money she was after. My family’s lawyers made sure of that. We had a pre-nup, and she broke it. She gave up almost immediately. I don’t think she even hired a lawyer of her own, she just signed everything my ones sent and then a few weeks later she disappeared. I knew she was here, but we had nothing to do with each other. Until a year ago, anyway.” 

A year ago. D’Artagnan’s blood runs cold as he connects the dots. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” he says out loud, near panic. “I slept with your _wife_.” As soon as he says it, he wants to punch himself for coming up with the worst thing possible to say in this scenario.

Well, unless he starts talking about what she was like in bed, in which case his fiancée is likely to stab him before Athos can, even though Athos is right here and she’s back at the station. Somehow Constance always knows when d’Artagnan is talking about the mistakes he made back when he was in love with her and she was married and he was trying to move on. She doesn’t blame him for them, exactly, but she also doesn’t like him to mention them, partly because a lot of them were really big fuck-ups on his part, and partly because she feels guilty about taking so long to sort things out with her now ex-husband.

Athos twists his lips in something that could be an attempt at a smile, but is missing most of the basic requirements, like anything approaching happiness or even amusement. “Ex-wife.”

Porthos gives d’Artagnan a look that shouts _shut up_ when he opens his mouth to reply to that, and says in a soothing voice to Athos, “Yeah, ex-wife. So who cares about her, eh? She’ll be long gone by now anyway, won’t she? You want to give us more of an idea what happened there?”

“Rochefort had some kind of blackmail material on her,” Athos says, gesturing at the burnt folder. “Incriminating evidence of something she’s done, I think. I gave her twelve hours to flee.” He gives another of those mirthless not-laughs that makes everyone wince. “Or a few more than that, now, I suppose.”

“But didn’t you want -” d’Artagnan starts to say, unable to comprehend why Athos wouldn’t want to put Milady away. He hated her when he just thought Milady de Winter was the cruel manipulator who gleefully ruined their best cases, and now he knows that she’s done even worse than that to Athos, so why let her go? It didn’t escape his notice that Athos gave no details about how things ended, besides badly.

Athos swings his red-eyed gaze to him, though, and d’Artagnan subsides. “We should get back to work,” he says instead, trying to bring the conversation back to something that will make Athos look less destroyed. “So are we still investigating Richelieu’s death?”

“No,” Athos says bleakly. “It’s not a murder. It was never a murder.”


	5. Where the Bodies are Buried

“It was a murder,” Lemay says, and Porthos nearly chokes on his coffee.

“What?” he manages.

“It’s a murder,” Lemay repeats himself, passing over the report. Porthos scans the overwhelming amount of polysyllabic medical terms, numbers, percentages and charts, and gives up almost immediately. He swears the forensics department deliberately make these things impossible to understand as a way of reminding the rest of them they’re just not as smart.

Athos isn’t here right now (grabbing breakfast, or possibly an ill-advised drink), but Aramis and d’Artagnan move to crowd behind Porthos, peering at the document as well. When he glances back at them, they have matching expressions of confusion.

“Can you please translate?” Aramis asks Lemay, still trying to read over Porthos’s shoulder.

“Someone induced a heart attack,” Lemay says. “They injected him with a very specific cocktail of difficult-to-identify drugs.” He starts listing them. It’s a long list. When he’s finished, he adds, “Death would have occurred within minutes. There are a few other cases in the system with a similar MO. It’s likely there’s more that were written off as natural causes, but I don’t know if it will be possible to find those. I’ll send you a list of the ones we know are related, though.”

“I’m getting married in a few weeks,” d’Artagnan says mournfully. “I really don’t have time to deal with this.”

Porthos rolls his eyes. “The wedding has what, eight people going? With no food or drink. And the honeymoon’s not for months. What’s there to organise?”

“The other cases should narrow down the suspects considerably,” Aramis says hopefully. “Assuming it’s not Rochefort, anyway. I wonder if any of Milady’s story about their falling-out was the truth?”

“Nothing Milady says is ever the truth,” d’Artagnan says grumpily.

Lemay clears his throat. “I had a quick look at the cases. No obvious similarities.”

“You think it’s a professional?” Porthos asks.

“I’m not a detective,” Lemay says awkwardly. “But it’s a very clever cocktail of drugs, and most of the victims were important people. My guess would be that someone hired a contract killer.” He gives them a nod and a smile and leaves.

Aramis closes his eyes. “So without finding the killer, we have almost no way of finding out who paid them. We can’t go through the financials of everyone who hated Richelieu, and even if we could, they’d be smart enough to cover it up. Anyone who can successfully kill Richelieu…”

“You saying we’re out of our league?” Porthos asks, pretending to be offended, but inwardly admitting that Aramis has a point. They’re good at their jobs, but contract killings are by their nature difficult to investigate. If the money trail’s hidden, there’s almost nothing to follow.

“Never,” Aramis assures him. He sighs. “Just that I’m temporarily stumped. We’ll have to get everything we can from the area around Richelieu’s house, all the traffic cams and any private security tapes he has, and look into everyone who shows up. It’ll be slow and even if we find someone, they’ll be hard to identify.”

That’s assuming that a well-paid and experienced contract killer is going to be stupid enough to show their face, too. 

“Leave it for the moment,” Porthos says. “What about those two unburnt files? Vargas said Rochefort kept all his most important files at home. Who have we got the dirt on?” Aramis was given those files to deal with and has been making lots of loud, thoughtful noises as he goes through them, purely to annoy the rest of them.

“It’s weird there’s only two,” Aramis says, holding them up. “But guess what’s even weirder? They’re not blackmail material.”

“No?”

“One much too in-depth file on Louis de Bourbon,” Aramis says, frowning. “And one even more in-depth file on Ana.”

“His bosses,” Porthos says doubtfully. “I guess that makes sense?”

“Nothing blackmail-worthy on either,” Aramis says flatly. “Unless Louis is particularly ashamed of his boarding school exploits. Well, there’s the affair, but since Ana already knows all about it and apparently he took Milady to quite a few high-profile events that wasn’t very secret to begin with.”

“Does Ana’s file have you on it?” 

“I’m discreet,” Aramis says, earning sceptical looks from both of them. “Fine, Ana’s discreet. No, I’m not there. Most of the time I spent with her was in the precinct during the abduction case, remember, and we’re hard to get eyes on in here.”

“So files on Milady, Louis and Ana, but no one else,” Porthos says. “Vargas said he kept most in his offices, but not the really important ones. Why these ones? What makes these the important ones?”

“Maybe Milady grabbed and hid all the really juicy ones before sitting down to stare at hers until Athos showed up,” d’Artagnan suggests. “She could be out there blackmailing to her heart’s content right now.”

Porthos frowns, not buying it. It doesn’t fit the facts, and d’Artagnan knows that as well as he does. No, these are the only ones that Rochefort thought were important enough to hide in his house, too paranoid to keep them in his offices. The question is why.

If Rochefort was currently blackmailing Milady, a skilled thief, it makes sense to keep her file as securely as possible. But Louis and Ana de Bourbon? He works for them, it wouldn’t shock anyone to know he had files on them. Why not store them at his office in a filing cabinet? Not exactly top secret. What are they missing?

“How’s it going with the burnt file, then?” Porthos asks, changing topics. 

“I’ll call and ask how the reconstruction’s progressing again,” d’Artagnan says. He hangs up after a quick conversation and grins at Porthos and Aramis. “They’re sending over scans of everything they’ve managed to find so far. Some of the papers were hardly burned, so it’s quite a few pages, all up.”

“Should’ve got ‘em to send it as they went,” Porthos grunts.

“Have you ever tried to talk them into extra effort? It’s amazing they’re working on it so quickly as it is,” d’Artagnan says, with all the world-weary authority of someone who’s been a policeman for all of a year. “Anyway, it’ll give us something to go on for _that_ case at least, although nothing for the murder. I mean, I doubt Milady killed Richelieu.”

“Well,” Aramis says thoughtfully. “Always possible.”

They all try to imagine Milady de Winter as a contract killer. It’s worryingly plausible. After a long moment, Porthos clears his throat and says, slightly less jokingly, “We’ll check the dates of the other ones just in case. Could be she’s got an alibi. Maybe even Athos as an alibi for some.”

Porthos always found it hard to imagine Athos married, even knowing he was divorced. Married to Milady de Winter seems even stranger, but who is he to judge? Lots of relationships look strange from the outside. That picture was pretty convincing proof that it made sense to them at the time. No prizes for guessing why it didn’t work out, though. 

The email goes to the whole taskforce, of course, but they stay gathered around Porthos’s computer anyway and go through the scanned documents as a group.

“She robbed the Spanish ambassador?” Aramis says, impressed, squinting at the blackened writing. “Over a decade ago, too. She would’ve been, what, a teenager then?”

“That depends on whether she was ever truthful about her age,” Athos says. None of them realised he’d returned and they swing arounds guiltily like they’re looking at something much more inappropriate than dry accounts of old crimes. “Does the file give her birth date?”

“It doesn’t,” Porthos says. “Least, not the bits we’ve got yet. We still don’t have even a real name for her.” He hesitates, then adds, “We do have more than enough to get her convicted under her current one, though, even though it doesn’t look like she ever went by ‘Milady de Winter’ back then. We’ve got the names of old witnesses who could probably identify her, some fingerprints, even a still of her from security footage back then. And there’s a _lot_ of thefts. She’d get ten years, minimum, for all these together, no matter how good her lawyer is.”

Athos winces almost imperceptibly. “When’s the most recent crime listed?”

“Eleven years ago,” Porthos says, checking his notes quickly. “But there’ll probably be more when they’ve gone through all the papers.”

“Eleven years,” Aramis muses. “So depending on her age now, she was probably a minor for half of these. Some of her crimes might also be treated as past the statute of limitations since they were over a decade ago – not the breaking and entering, but the smaller stuff.”

“Only some?” d’Artagnan asks. “I thought the statute of limitations for burglary was always ten years. You know, as long as no one was home, and no one got hurt…”

“Depends on the severity of the individual crime as well, and if there’s evidence of a pattern,” Athos explains, expression wooden. He moves away, not looking at the screen like the rest of them, returning to his desk instead. “The district attorney can choose if it’s ten or thirty years on a case by case basis. Given the number of thefts, in this case, they’ll choose thirty.”

The next scan is of a picture. It’s Milady de Winter, but she looks completely unlike herself, and completely unlike the woman lying against Athos in the sun in that other photo as well. Part of that’s because she can’t be much more than fifteen in the picture. Also, while her expression of pure happiness in the photo with Athos was uncharacteristic, it’s nothing compared to how strange it is to see such open terror on her face.

There’s a man beside her in the picture, probably in his mid to late thirties, and he has her arm in an iron grip, pulling her along with him as they walk somewhere. 

“Her father?” d’Artagnan guesses uncertainly. “They don’t look alike. Adopted, maybe?”

“ _I’d_ drag my daughter home to get changed if she was wearing that,” Aramis agrees, too jovial. It’s obvious to Porthos he doesn’t think for a second that’s what’s going on here. Unlike d’Artagnan, Aramis has been a beat cop in the bad parts of town. And Porthos, well, he was _born_ in a bad part of town.

The girl in the photo has on an outfit that would horrify most parents, that much is true. Top nothing but lacey strings, skirt a brief one cut off to be even shorter, sky-high heels and glaringly bright make-up. While they’ve seen Milady de Winter in all kinds of seductive outfits, plenty of short skirts, plenty of tight tops, and heels and make-up of all varieties, none of the clothes Porthos has ever seen her wear have looked anything like this. Her usual style is sensual but also sophisticated and flattering, but this is cheap and the girl in the picture doesn’t wear it with anything like Milady’s self-assurance. It’s far more skin than Porthos wants to see on a teenage girl, and the picture evokes memories of the streetwalkers around where he grew up. He bites his lip and doesn’t voice his own theories about what the man could be to her (client? Pimp?) because Athos might not be looking at this but he’s certainly close enough to hear.

He clicks onto the next page before they can stare at it any longer, but that’s just another still from a moment later. In this one the man is yanking her to face him, and she’s cowering under his glare.

Porthos clears his throat, tearing his eyes away from the sight of a young Milady de Winter looking just like the child she was. “Now you’re back we should switch to working on Richelieu’s murder,” he says to Athos, enjoying the man’s suddenly intent expression. “These are just old thefts and Milady de Winter’s in the wind, but the longer we leave Richelieu’s case to rot the more likely the contract killer will be well out of reach.”

“I’m sorry, Richelieu’s _murder_?” Athos asks sharply. “A contract killer? Would you care to loop me in?”

Aramis smiles at him, a little bit of nervousness showing in the edges of it. “Didn’t we mention? Lemay came around with the lab results. Richelieu was definitely murdered.”

Athos stares at them for a long moment, then closes his eyes and says, “ _Fuck,_ ” in tones of deepest despair.

X_X_X_X

It’s late afternoon, and they’re getting nowhere. Aramis hesitates, but then raps on Athos’s desk anyway and says cheerfully, “Knock, knock.”

Athos glances up, refocusing. By the look of it, he’s rereading the old murder reports Lemay dropped by. They haven’t seen a connection yet, so it’s looking likely that Lemay’s guess about a contract killer was a good one, but Aramis knows his friend won’t rest until he’s gone through them at least ten times and ruled everything out. Athos has always lived for his work… or, well, maybe not always. But as long as Aramis has known him, it’s been work, booze, and misanthropy all the way.

D’Artagnan is off getting coffee, and Porthos looks so focused on his screen that an earthquake wouldn’t shift him, so he won’t get a better time to talk to Athos without being interrupted by the others. Sometimes it’s better to tackle Athos one on one.

“Yes?” Athos says.

“Thought you might want to go out tomorrow night,” Aramis says. “Just the four of us. Or we could all go to Porthos’s house, have a few beers, watch the game.”

“What game?”

“I assume there’s something on. It’s just supposed to be background noise, anyway,” Aramis says. “The point is beer and friends, not sports. Don’t ruin the façade.”

“I don’t think that’s the façade in this case,” Athos says dryly. “Are you trying to babysit me?”

“Can you blame me?” Aramis sighs. “Look, when Ana stayed with Louis, you were there for me.”

“I told you that you were a fucking moron.”

“…Yes. That’s true. But I recognised that as your way of being supportive,” Aramis says. “Trying to guide me in the right direction. Help me move on. In your own, extremely blunt way.”

“Going to call me a fucking moron, then?” Athos asks. “I’d deserve it.”

“I’m sorry for joking about… what I walked in on the other night,” Aramis says awkwardly. “I didn’t know the backstory, obviously. If I had I would never have said anything. Except possibly the ‘fucking moron’ comment, of course,” he adds, giving Athos a mischievous grin to try and lighten his mood.

“It’s my fault you didn’t know it,” Athos says distantly.

“Why didn’t I know it?” Aramis asks. “You could have told us. I understand that it’s painful, but you could have given us the bare bones, at least. There was no reason to blindside us with this.”

“It was a long time ago,” Athos says, and now he has that brick-wall expression that means Aramis won’t get a damn thing out of him. No one’s more skilled at avoidance than Athos. No doubt all those years have interrogating other people have given him an edge when he’s being questioned himself.

Aramis sighs and returns to his desk, but he can’t concentrate on the screen. He’s still staring at it blankly twenty minutes later when Ana calls. 

“Yes,” he says into his phone as she talks, “Yes, of course. Of course. See you soon.” He tries to force the foolish grin down as he puts down the phone. Ana’s coming by for a coffee and catch up, her excuse being that she wants to know how he enjoyed the party the night before last. She really cares about the events she organises, but he knows in this case it’s just an excuse, and that’s okay with him. It’s been months since they’ve really spent time together – she was working on her marriage, and he was working on moving on. Maybe they can be friends now.

Friends who share every detail of their day, and hug hello and goodbye, and occasionally kiss, and maybe once or twice fall into bed together – okay, perhaps not friends. But if he avoids ever touching at her or really looking at her, at least he can be totally-not-in-love with her from slightly less afar.

Only a few moments after he hangs up, Porthos gets up and goes to the printers. The squeal of the wheels on his chair jerks Aramis out of his happy Ana thoughts. He watches Porthos as he moves, attention immediately caught by the slightly-too-casual way he holds the printout so they can’t see it as he goes by. When Porthos moseys over to the lift, Aramis leaps up and goes to stand beside him.

“Going for coffee?” he asks idly.

“Yeah. Aren’t you supposed to be meeting Ana?” Porthos asks.

“She’s coming around in half an hour,” Aramis says. “I have time to join you wherever you’re going. Which I’m guessing is actually to Constance instead of coffee.” He reaches out and plucks the printout out of Porthos’s hand. Sure enough, it’s tiny Milady de Winter, looking like jailbait in more ways than one.

“Good guess,” Porthos says, grabbing it back from him as he gets on the lift.

“I get why you’re avoiding talking to Athos abut that, but you could at least let me and d’Artagnan know what you’re up to,” Aramis says, following him.

“D’Artagnan would tell Athos right away, you know he would,” Porthos says.

“And Constance will tell d’Artagnan right away as well,” Aramis says, then considers it. “Well, maybe she won’t. She does get pretty hacked off when he tries to meddle in her work. After that time undercover… Anyway, I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“Fair enough,” Porthos shrugs. “I just don’t want to drag this shit up with Athos already looking like hell. ‘Specially if it turns out not to matter.”

“Which is the most likely outcome. Do you really think identifying a possible pimp from a decade and a half ago is likely to help us find Milady?”

“If he’s in jail, he might be willing to trade us a few facts in return for some creature comforts,” Porthos says, though Aramis can tell he doesn’t like the idea of it much. “We know some of what she’s _done_ , but nothing about who she _is_.”

“As if there’s a difference.” The lift dings open and they step out together, matching their strides with the ease of long practice.

“Yeah, but you know what I mean. If she’s got a bolthole, or family, or old partners in crime to run to for help, we need to know it. Right now we only know that she’s damn good at stealing shit and she started young.”

Aramis can hear a slight note of constraint in Porthos’s voice. Milady de Winter wasn’t the only one who started young, though if this picture’s any indication, she got up to a few things that as far as Aramis knows Porthos never dabbled in. But then, he’s never asked, since Porthos’s time on the street is obviously a sore spot. Sometimes the best way to be a friend is not to pry. Nevertheless, he decides to steer the conversation back to safer waters. “We should keep Athos as far away from this case as we can manage, do all the work ourselves,” he says.

“Yeah. Whatever she did that made him decide to divorce her, he’s clearly not over it,” Porthos agrees.

It’s pretty obvious to all of them that Milady screwed over Athos instead of the other way around, not just because of her general personality, but because of Athos’s expression whenever he talks about it. A man being interrogated with bamboo spikes would look less pained.

“Not over _her_ , you mean,” Aramis says.

“You think?”

“The man hasn’t dated in years. He didn’t even really go for it with Ninon, and she was lovely.”

“We’re not all you, Aramis,” Porthos says. They round the corner to the Vice area. “I reckon whatever she did just put him off romance for life.”

Aramis recalls the kiss he walked in on. He could win this argument easily by mentioning it, but the thought makes him uncomfortable. With the benefit of hindsight, he can see how vicious it was, how they tore at each other like they were fighting more than kissing. What he’d taken to be wild passion that was hilariously out of character for Athos now almost seems like the two of them trying to take each other apart. He’s seen Athos give out a few blows when criminals have resisted arrest, and he’d always had a cold restraint to the way he fought, holding himself back. For the first time Aramis wonders why Athos needs to hold himself in check so tightly.

“You two,” Constance says with a put-upon sigh when she sees them, but her face softens into a smile anyway. “What do you want?”

“We can’t just want to see a beautiful woman?” Aramis says, giving her an exaggerated wink.

“Oh, because beautiful women are sorely lacking in your life?” she mocks. 

“It’s a curse,” he says earnestly.

Porthos snorts, cutting into this, and puts the photo down on her desk. “We need to find someone.”

Constance picks it up and squints. “Why does she look so familiar?”

“Add about fifteen years, give or take.” Admittedly, Aramis has no idea how much to give or take. Milady has one of those faces that are all elegant bone structure and sharp personality, which makes her immediately recognisable but also curiously ageless. 

Constance blinks, her lips pursing in immediate disapproval. “Milady de Winter? D’Artagnan said you were working with her.”

“We were,” Porthos admits. “We shouldn’t have.”

“Well, I could have told you that,” Constance says. “In fact, I did.”

“D’Artagnan hasn’t brought you up to speed yet?” Aramis says, now concerned for d’Artagnan’s safety when he gets home tonight. “Marvellous. We were rather hoping you wouldn’t mention this little visit to him, though, so if perhaps you could let him tell you the story in his own time -”

“You want me to ask my CIs if any of them have seen her?” Constance asks, choosing not to give a definitive answer about whether she’ll tell her soon-to-be husband about this. “Or are you looking for evidence of something? You must have a more recent picture, surely.”

“We’re rather curious about the man beside her, actually,” Aramis says. He gives her his most charming smile, which makes her roll her eyes.

Constance picks the picture up, looking at it more closely. Any amusement in her eyes fades into professional detachment. “Yes, he seems like the kind of person we might have in our books, just based on how much of a dickhead he looks. But fifteen years is a long time. I’ll ask around, but the odds aren’t great.”

“Aramis?”

Aramis and Porthos both turn to see Ana de Bourbon standing behind them, radiant in a sundress that makes her look impossibly sweet and wholesome, blonde hair loose. “Ana,” Aramis says, unable to stop himself from smiling goofily at her. 

“At the front they said they thought they’d seen you go this way,” she says apologetically. “Perhaps I should have waited at the coffee place, but -” 

“No, no! I would’ve been there, but you said you’d be another half an hour at least,” he says, still beaming, reaching up to twist at his moustache without realising.

“I drove faster than I meant to,” she says, blushing prettily. “I suppose I shouldn’t admit that to a policeman, should I?”

“We left traffic behind a while ago,” Porthos says dryly, clearly trying not to roll his eyes at them. He turns back to Constance. “Anyway, thanks for looking at this, Detective Bonacieux.” Constance had elected to keep her married name, pointing out that since there was a gap of less than three months between her divorce and her wedding, there was hardly any point getting used to her maiden name again.

“No problem,” Constance says. She stares at the picture for another moment. “It’s bizarre to see Milady de Winter looking so… well… you know.” 

“Young,” Porthos says with a nod, although they all know she means no such thing.

“Milady de Winter?” Ana says, her face twisting the same way as Constance’s had.

It hurts Aramis to see her hurting, but he also can’t stop the jolt of unreasonable envy that goes through him. He can’t believe that Louis is lucky enough to have Ana and is still willing to cheat on her. Despite the not inconsiderable persuasive powers of Milady de Winter, there’s no excuse for treating her that way. Of course, some would view what he and Ana have as inappropriate too, but it’s not at all the same thing. What they have is real feelings, feelings that they couldn’t help but develop, and they would never deliberately hurt Louis, not like how Ana says he threw his affair in her face. Completely different.

Ana steps forward and plucks up the picture before they can stop her. Porthos reaches out to take it from her but she almost absent-mindedly moves away, holding it up to the light. Her eyes narrow, studying it closely. 

“Bizarre or not, you really shouldn’t be looking at evidence,” Aramis murmurs uneasily, trying to reach out and get it back.

“It _is_ bizarre,” Ana says thoughtfully, evading him. “I’m pretty sure I know this man.”

Aramis blinks at him. “Wait. What? You know him?”

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you his name,” she says absently, still staring at it. “But I’ve met him, I’m sure of it.”

“Why would someone like _you_ have met _him_?” Constance asks incredulously. When Ana’s gaze swings to her, she coughs. “I didn’t mean that to sound half as rude as it came out, I swear.”

“No, it’s fine,” Ana says, smiling at her now. “Have we met? I think I’d remember someone so outspoken.”

“Constance – uh, or Detective Bonacieux, if you’d prefer. Shortly to be Detective d’Artagnan. And you?”

“Ana,” Ana says. She places the picture back in Aramis’s hands. “It’s good to meet you, Constance.” With one last friendly smile, she returns her attention to Aramis. “I think I met this man when planning a dinner for Rochefort once. I came over to check numbers with him and ran into this man in the foyer. He was a bit gross, leering at me, making a few comments. Rochefort said he’d come to apply for a job, but promised me there was no chance he’d get it now he’d insulted me. It must have been – two years ago? Maybe three?”

Aramis exchanges a glance with Porthos, blood suddenly pumping quicker. He can see the same light of interest in his friend’s bright eyes. There’s no chance that’s a coincidence. Do Milady and Rochefort have a relationship going back further than they’d thought? This could be key to understanding what’s going on. Forget trying to avoid implying to Athos that his wife might have been a working girl once, they need to tell him. They need to pursue this.

“I’m sorry, Ana, I think we’ll have to have coffee another time,” Aramis says distractedly. “I need to go look into this.”

“I need a break,” Constance says decisively, cracking her neck and starting to rise. “If you’d like some company…?”

“That sounds wonderful,” Ana says. “So how long have you worked here?”

“If Constance wasn’t crazy in love with d’Artagnan, I’d think she was chasing you out of Madame de Bourbon’s affections,” Porthos notes after they disappear. “’Course, that might be a good thing. You do remember she’s married, right?”

“Can’t forget it,” Aramis says. “Let’s go tell Athos this whole mess might involve Rochefort after all. I can’t wait to see what non-expression he’ll make for that one.”

X_X_X_X

Athos has had almost no sleep, not nearly enough alcohol, is currently swamped by work, and has had to put up with cloyingly sympathetic looks from his friends all day. Anne is in the wind, whatever that means, and he simultaneously can’t stand that he doesn’t know where she is and is dreading the idea of locating her and having to arrest her. His house smells of perfume and memories, his mouth tastes like old scotch and bile, and whenever he closes his eyes, he’s back in that closet grinding viciously against the woman who betrayed him so comprehensively that Judas would probably have considered it excessive. Right at the moment, he thinks he may actually hate his life.

Treville looks like he shares the feeling. He’s been rubbing at his forehead for nearly five minutes as if he’s trying to iron out the deep stress lines Athos’s story has put there. Eventually, he gives a deep sigh and says, “You should have cleared the whole plan with me first, not just the parts that were above board.”

“No, we shouldn’t have,” Athos says, used to this discussion. He nearly always fills the Captain in on every detail of an investigation that seems pertinent, regardless of how bizarre, illogical, poorly planned or borderline insane it is. When he doesn’t, it’s usually for a very good reason. “You needed plausible deniability.”

“My denial would still be plausible, trust me,” Treville says sourly. “And you never know, I might’ve stopped you doing it at all.”

“You wouldn’t have.”

Treville stares at him and sighs again. “You’re right, I wouldn’t have. But next time tell me. If I might get a call telling me that my best detectives have been arrested for breaking and entering, I’d at least like to be prepared, Athos. So you found nothing?”

“A laundry list of evidence against Milady de Winter,” Athos lists off, managing to keep his voice even. “A strange connection between Milady and Rochefort from years ago that we haven’t been able to figure out. Useless files on both of the de Bourbons that were apparently very important to Rochefort anyway. And no confirmation that any of this has anything to do with Armand Richelieu’s death.”

“And the contract killer?”

“Is a contract killer,” Athos says. “Finding them is never easy. We’ve requested everything we can think of from everyone we can think of. We’ve gotten all we can from around Richelieu’s townhouse, so if whoever it is was missed a tape, we might see them. But that gives us twenty-four hours of footage from forty-something viewpoints, so it’ll take some time to go through.”

“It’s still hard to believe Richelieu is dead,” Treville says, voice grave. There’s a surprising trace of sadness on his face. “After all those years of arguing. I know it seems difficult to imagine now, but he used to help out back when I started as captain. He’d give me the occasional helping hand, information I needed, people to talk to, even evidence if the mood struck him. We weren’t friends, but we respected each other as colleagues, and later, as worthy opponents. He was the smartest man I ever knew. It’s just… hard to believe he’s gone.”

Athos is tempted to ask if it’s also hard to believe that Richelieu was murdered, given that everyone else has been more surprised that it took so long, but taking out his terrible mood on Treville would be unfair.

Instead, he gives Treville all the files they have, answers all of the questions the man has. There’s no one he respects more than the Captain.

Afterwards, he should go home. Failing that, he should go to Porthos’s place, or Aramis’s, or even d’Artagnan’s. Instead, he goes straight to the bar around the corner from his apartment.

There’s a game on. He watches intently, but couldn’t say what the score is, or frankly even what the sport is. Instead he down his drinks with a sort of grim determination and tries to think about anything but her. Of course, he thinks about nothing but her. 

Five years. Five years since he found out he never even knew his own wife’s name, since he realised what he’d thought was true love had in fact been a selfish lie built on her greed, since he walked into his brother’s offices to see her on her knees before him. It’s strange, but when she’s not around, there’s no amount of alcohol that can block out that disgusting, destructive memory. And yet when she is nearby, he can’t summon it if he tries. And he has been trying. He’d like to just be disgusted by her, to remember what she did every moment of every day, if it would let him move on. Instead he’s still caught in her web, wanting her, missing her.

This last year when he called Thomas he found questions were stuck in his throat. It was why he’d held onto the phone nearly a full minute longer than he’d ever managed before. He found it hard not to ask, how did it start? _When_ did it start? It was all so hazy and confusing. Anne had given her two weeks’ notice for the job as Thomas’s secretary five days before he caught them together – why did she do that, if they were sleeping together? Was it some last-ditch effort to avoid giving in to whatever she felt for his brother? Or had the affair with Thomas been going since the first moment he met her, and Anne quit the job because she was just bored of playing working woman as well as dutiful wife? How did Thomas figure out she was liar, a cheat, a gold-digger, when Athos had no clue? Or did he know that from the start? And why would Thomas sleep with her if he knew that? Hell, why sleep with her at all? No matter how beautiful, how irresistible Anne is, there’s no excuse for that. Athos could never have done that to Thomas in a million years, and that’s not just because Catherine is… well, Catherine. It’s because he could never have hurt his brother like that. But Thomas had done it to him, and Anne had done it, and he nurses his drink and wonders what he’d done to deserve such an absurd level of callous cruelty from them.

The worst question, of course, is not how or when the affair began, but _why_ did it start? He knows no one should blame themselves for being cheated on, but it’s hard not to wonder. Anne had the money and security she was aiming for, after all – since the moment they moved in together after three weeks of dating, he’d added her to his accounts, told her to spend whatever she liked, that what was his was hers. The money meant nothing to him, after all, he’d grown up surrounded by it. But to her, every new dress was worthy of giddy twirling about the house, every meal cooked from scratch with good ingredients was a thing of pride and joy, every piece of jewellery deserved to be meticulously cleaned and shined and loved. In hindsight, he can see she adored his money, but the time all that registered was how much he adored spending it on her. She’d paid her wages into the accounts he’d added her to in a pretence of paying him back, of course, an attempt to _contribute_ she said, but it had largely been his money. Inherited and undeserved, but still his.

If she really was so shallow that money was all she wanted, there was no rhyme or reason to her decision to screw his brother. She had money. Endless amounts of it. She’d never so much as made a dent in his inheritance, no matter what she bought. So what was missing in their relationship that made her willing to destroy it for Thomas? Athos had hardly been an inattentive husband. He’d given her every spare hour he had, had shared every personal story, every idle thought, every little truth, and had begged for her to do the same in return. He’d loved her half to madness, giving her everything that was in him to give, wild for her and about her and with her. He wonders sometimes when he looks back if she’d felt smothered by him and her affair with Thomas was a way to escape that, but somehow that doesn’t seem… right. Anne had never acted like she wanted him to be less present. In fact, she’d done the opposite, seizing every moment with him she could, like on some level she knew that their time together was limited.

So why had she wanted Thomas? He’d always been everyone’s favourite, but he was engaged to Catherine, and Anne couldn’t possibly have believed Thomas would leave his perfect, connected fiancée for his brother’s wife. That would be political suicide, and even then Thomas had been planning a political career – though for some reason he still hasn’t started pursuing it in earnest, Athos isn’t sure why. Regardless, if she didn’t think her and Thomas’s affair would come to anything, why do it? Was it all just lust? Even looking back on their sex life with his newly cynical view, he finds it hard to think there was anything lacking there. They’d done everything and anything and they’d done it a _lot_. But for all he knew, that might just be his own ego talking. She’d always seemed more than eager for every touch, but maybe every man thought that. Clearly, something was lacking, and she’d gone to Thomas for it. 

It’s harder for him to measure drinks in a bar, since he can’t see the bottle gradually being depleted, but eventually he decides he’s probably had enough. Whatever the game was he was pretending to watch, it’s long over.

He’s sure he drank a lot, and by the taste of it the scotch wasn’t watered down or anything, but despite that he feels very sober. Sometimes on nights like this it seems like he can’t get drunk no matter how much he drinks. He lets himself into his apartment, already wondering if he should open a bottle just on the off chance that this one will magically do what the last fifteen drinks did not and cloud his mind.

He’s so focused on considering this it takes a long moment before he realises that his breathing has picked up, his heartbeat is racing, and it feels like every muscle has gone taut in readiness for battle. It takes a longer moment to realise why, and then it’s like a kick to the stomach.

“Hi honey, I’m home,” Milady says in a singsong voice from behind him.


	6. Home Invasion

“What are you _doing_ here?” Athos croaks, swinging around to face her, horrified. Of all the stupid things to – “You’re wanted by the law! I told you to get the hell out of town!”

“I like this city,” Milady says, apparently unperturbed. “I mean, I’m not a fan of the traffic, but have you seen some of the gardens? Breathtaking.”

“Now I have to arrest you,” he says, the knowledge like a lead weight in his stomach. “You know I can’t just let you go a _second_ time. You know that.”

“Oh please, Athos, you’ve never let me go at all… at least in one sense,” Milady says, and the casual amusement in her tone goes a long way towards reconciling him to the idea of arresting her. 

“Turn around, put your hands on the back of your head, and get on your knees,” Athos says harshly.

“What, just like that? Haven’t you ever heard of foreplay?” she mocks. “Check your phone.”

“Check my… what?” he stares at her for a moment, then starts to fumble it out of his pocket, already aware that he’s not going to like whatever he sees.

“You’ll probably have a few missed calls from your Captain,” she says. “Give him a call. I’ll wait.” She holds up the full wine glass in her hand – his glass, his wine – and raises it like she’s making a toast to him, then drinks about half of it down in one quick swig. 

Oddly, that calms him more than anything else. If she’s gulping down wine instead of sipping it, she’s more nervous than she looks. He hates it when he’s a mess and she’s completely calm. In fact, now he looks, he can see her hands are trembling slightly, and that the way she’s talking is just a bit too casual to be entirely genuine. She may even be dreading this conversation more than he already is.

He has six missed calls from Captain Treville. He presses the button to call him back with a sinking sensation. “Sir?” He listens. He closes his eyes. He says heatedly, “But she completely played us the last time she – alright, but that’s no reason to – no, sir. No, I’m _not_ done. I understand what you’re saying, but – no. Fine, we’ll talk about this tomorrow. Are you sure we shouldn’t put her in the holding cell at least? I see. Yes, sir. Goodbye, then.”

He ends the call and looks at Milady, face twisting into a scowl. “You made a _deal_?”

“A good one, too,” she says, giving him a smirk in return that still has something oddly nervous about it. “Surely you remember how convincing I can be when I put my all in?” She flutters her eyelashes at him. Something about the gesture strikes him as different than normal, and he realises it’s that she’s not wearing make-up. For that matter, her clothes are casual wear, a tank top and jeans, not so different to what she’d wear around the house when they were married, which must be deliberate. If anything, this makes him more suspicious than if she was wearing her usual sex kitten attire. It makes her look younger and more defenceless.

“The only thing I’m convinced of is that you’ll betray any deal you’ve made the second the situation goes south,” Athos says harshly.

“Well, that’s a problem for Treville, not you,” she points out. “Now, would you still like me on my knees, or can I at least finish my drink first?” 

“Treville said you had important knowledge about the case,” Athos says. “That you think you know who the contract killer is and how to find him.”

“Her,” she corrects. “Well, them, actually, but frankly I’ve always thought Sofia was the brains of the operation.”

“Hang on, you actually _know_ them?” he gives her a disbelieving look.

“Only by reputation,” she says, taking another sip of her drink and then putting it down on the table and crossing her arms. “They’d probably know me by reputation as well. Francesco Garcia and Sofia Martinez, killers for hire. They’ve been active for well over a decade now. They’re excellent poisoners and even better shots, but when they need it to look like natural causes, they always fall back on the same cocktail of drugs. I recognised it the moment I heard your friend in forensics listing them off.”

“The moment you…” he closes his eyes, feeling the beginnings of a headache. “Oh, for God’s sake, Anne. You bugged the precinct?”

“Oh, enough with the disappointed looks, Athos,” she says, although for a brief second she does look almost apologetic. “For five years my job was to know everything. You really think I was going to avoid an excellent source of information just because using it would – what, make you sigh heavily at me? I do what I have to.”

“Treville thinks he can talk the DA down just in return for a couple of names?” Athos asks incredulously, deciding to leave arguments about listening devices for another time. “Those papers held evidence for a dozen robberies. You’ve just admitted to bugging a fucking police station. Names won’t get us anywhere, especially since they’re so generic they have to be fake.”

“Oh, no doubt,” Milady agrees. “But I have an… old employer… who might know how to contact them, if we can persuade him. He hired them once or twice back when I was working for him. Treville thinks the DA will agree to consider my crimes past the statute of limitations in return for the name of whoever hired them to kill Richelieu.”

“I don’t even know where to start with the problems with this plan,” Athos says. “You _might_ be able to talk your old boss into helping. He _might_ know how to contact the assassins. We _might_ be able to trap them and arrest them. They _might_ know the name of who hired them. We _might_ be able to leverage them into sharing it with us. That’s a long, convoluted list of maybes, Anne. I’ve never known you to gamble on long odds.”

“You’d be surprised,” she says calmly.

“You could’ve gotten away,” he says, shaking his head, feeling his anger surge again in the face of her calmness. “Why do this? Why come back? To do the right thing?” His bitter disbelief is palpable.

She stands very still for a moment, staring at him in a blank way that makes him feel uncomfortable, lost in thought. Then, all of a sudden she shakes herself out of it, and gives him her usual indifferent half-smirk. “The right thing? Don’t be a fool. Do you know how rare a deal like this is? Hell, even if we can’t follow the chain the whole way through, shopping in my old boss and serving up Sofia and Francesco will probably be enough to make the DA coo over how reformed I am. It will be so _relaxing_ to know my past is all forgiven and forgotten.”

“Not all of it,” he says darkly.

It hits, and he can see it from the way she swallows, the way her eyes flash with pain for a moment before recovering. After she’s regained her composure, she rolls her eyes, as if trying to cover up that moment. “I meant legally and you know it. Now, we can go into all this tomorrow. I imagine your friends will have just as many questions as you do, and I’m not in the habit of repeating myself. Plus it’s getting late. So, where am I sleeping?”

“You can’t be serious,” he says, voice flat. “You’re not staying here. I don’t care if you sleep on the fucking street, but not here.”

“I’m sorry, I thought you were worried about me making a run for it.” Her lips twist into what’s clearly supposed to be another smile, but he can tell something in what he said upset her again, not that he cares right now. “I suppose I can stay elsewhere -”

“You have a house of your own,” he protests. 

“There are reasons I can’t stay there.” She looks away, clearly not about to tell him what those are. “I also can’t use my accounts, but you’ve frozen them anyway, so that hardly matters. I’d explain, but like I said, I’m saving up my voice for tomorrow. So can I stay here or not?”

“You can take the couch,” he says, giving in. “We’ll sort out something else tomorrow.”

“Very ungentlemanly of you, but I’ll survive,” she says with a slight smile. “The couch is fine. Thanks, Athos.” Then she gives him a mischievous look, and adds innocently, “I should warn you I still sleep naked, though, so you should try and keep your eyes averted if you need to go through the living room for any reason.”

He knows damn well she’s messing with him, just by her wicked half-smile, but that doesn’t stop him reacting. Any reason like going to the bathroom, getting breakfast in the morning, or even getting to his own front door? He pictures her curled up on the couch, bare skin pressed against the rough fabric of it, all those slender pale limbs sprawled in sleep, the naked, creamy curves and lines of her supple body on glorious display, not just visible but within reach whenever he goes through the living room. His brain stalls.

“I’ll take the couch, then,” he says, a little hoarsely, giving in just like she must have known she would when she presented him with that image, even as a joke. Of course, spending the whole night imagining her naked in his bed won’t be much better, but at least there’ll be a closed door in case she does follow through on the threat. He always felt like he burnt out a few dozen brain cells whenever he looked directly at her naked body when they were together, and right now he doesn’t have enough brain cells to spare.

“How chivalrous,” she says, eyes sliding half-closed. He can see lazy amusement in them, but also a spark of something else. She finishes the wine and looks up at him from under her eyelashes flirtatiously. “Of course, there’s a simple solution to the problem of who gets the bed that you don’t seem to have considered -”

“Stop it,” he says, closing his eyes again, as if he hadn’t been thinking the exact same thing, his imagination playing the likely result in wondrous detail. Her, gasping against his mouth, arching against his touch, wanting him, only him, moans and pleas spilling out of her helplessly. The scene – half memory, half fantasy – is playing across the back of his eyelids in technicolour. He wishes he could stop seeing it. He wishes he could just go for it.

Of course, knowing her, the scene would play out very differently. She’d probably follow through on her threat to sleep naked, wriggle against him like she had in that closet until he was crazy with lust, maybe even hook her leg around him so the core of her pressed warm and wet against his skin, and then respond by pulling his hands off her if he lost his mind and took that as an invitation. She’d pretend shock that he could imagine for a second she wanted him, shake her head in feigned disgust. Just another little game to torture him.

Of course, he could change her mind about that, he thinks, trying not to choke on a fresh wave of lust as he considers it, he could change her mind just like he somehow had in that closet when she rubbed herself against him purely to drive him insane. He could easily play along with her game and turn the tables on her, touch her in just the right places, little accidental-seeming, apparently chaste touches that would nevertheless make her lose her breath, until she couldn’t force herself to turn him down no matter how much she wanted to torture him, until she was wet and needy and whining with it –

“Goodnight, then,” Milady says. She’s moved towards him while he was lost in his fantasy, and he opens his eyes to find her dizzily close. She leans up and decorously kisses his cheek before he can stop her. Her mouth is warm and the scent of her perfume drifts up to him. It takes every bit of self control he has not to pull her closer. “I hope it’s not too hard,” she says with a glimmer of mischief, letting her gaze drop to his groin for a split second, then raising it again innocently and continuing before he can do something stupid like stop her taunting with a rough kiss. “The couch, I mean, of course.”

“Of course,” he says sardonically, still fighting his own body. How the hell can she still do this to him? “Goodnight, Anne.”

X_X_X_X

For a second when he looks up, d’Artagnan thinks he’s suffering from extreme déjà vu. Milady de Winter, dressed provocatively, strolling through the precinct like she owns the place, Athos at her side glowering. He comes to his feet with a curse, already striding towards them. Porthos and Aramis exchange surprised glances.

“You caught her?” d’Artagnan says, although he already knows that’s not what’s going on here. Milady is obviously not cuffed, and doesn’t look remotely cowed. Instead she seems faintly entertained by his reaction.

“She made a deal,” Athos says in a low voice. “She’s working with us now.”

“A deal? Why would anyone make a deal with someone like _her_?” d’Artagnan splutters. “She screwed us over the last time we trusted her! She’s guilty of dozens of crimes! What kind of idiot -”

“That would be me, d’Artagnan,” the Captain says, appearing from his office. His voice is iron. “And the DA’s office, for that matter. Do we need to have a conversation about respect for your superiors in the workplace?”

“I – no, sir,” d’Artagnan manages, but then finds his stride again. “Sir, she’s a criminal, a sociopath, even. She lies continually. She nearly got us in serious trouble just days ago with her fucking games. You can’t really expect us to work with her!”

“I expect you to do your job and find out who murdered Armand Richelieu,” Treville says sharply. “I believe she can help with that. She’s told me some of the facts, and they’re enough to convince me you won’t find proof without her assistance.”

Milady doesn’t bother to say _so there_ , since her smug little grin says it for her.

“She should at the very least be in handcuffs,” d’Artagnan says as a last ditch effort, but he’s already accepted that he’s losing this. “We need to process her and charge her before she can make a deal.”

“In this case, there are some very good reasons not to,” Treville says. “I’m sure she’ll explain them to you.” He turns and goes back into his office, apparently feeling he’s said everything he needs to.

They all swing to look at her at that one, Athos’s eyebrows rising faintly in query.

Milady dismisses their curiosity with an idle wave of her hand, as if it’s all unimportant, but they keep staring and eventually she gives in. “There’s a possibility that if you add my arrest to the files on my old cases, someone will come and try to kill me.”

“Kill you?” d’Artagnan says, raising a doubtful eyebrow.

“You’ve probably already burned this identity and made my previous residence and place of work too dangerous to go back to, just by putting ‘Milady de Winter’ in those files,” she says, looking almost annoyed. “Inconsiderate of you. Anyway, shall we move on?”

Porthos gives her a hard look. “Yeah, we may need more details than that.” 

“Some of my oldest friends aren’t so friendly anymore,” she says with a shrug. “It’s heartbreaking, the way people drift apart. I thought we were here to talk about Rochefort?”

“You still think it’s Rochefort who ordered the hit on Richelieu?”

“Honestly, I really thought Armand had died of natural causes,” Milady says , a faint frown furrowing her brow. “It was a real surprise to find out that someone was brave enough to actually try and kill him. Even more of one that they succeeded. I suppose everyone has off days, but even so, Sofia and Francesco must have gotten extremely lucky.”

“Sofia and Francesco?” Aramis says, grabbing a notebook. “The hit men?”

“Maybe we should discuss this somewhere more private,” Porthos suggests. “Like an interrogation room.”

“Definitely more private,” Athos says, giving Milady a glare. “Apparently _someone_ put listening devices around here. Aramis, do you think you could -”

“On it,” Aramis says with a sigh, throwing the notebook back down on his desk. “Or you could just tell us where you put them, you know.”

“Allegedly put them,” she corrects him. “And if I did give you the locations, wouldn’t you be worried I left one out on purpose? You’ll end up going over the whole place with a fine-toothed comb whatever I tell you.”

“Damn it,” Aramis says, and wanders off to get the bug scanner only he knows how to use.

“I’ll make sure no one’s watching from the other side of the glass in the interrogation, and lock the door,” Porthos says, entering into the spirit of this.

“Okay,” Athos says once the rest of them are in the interrogation room, clearly making an effort to be patient and reasonable. He’s speaking through gritted teeth, but otherwise he looks fairly calm. “Take us through this, then. What do you know?”

Milady hesitates. “A lot,” she says, and for a second d’Artagnan thinks she’s just being smug, but then she frowns again. “Enough that I’m not quite sure where to start.”

“How much of what you told us the other day was the truth?” Porthos asks, joining them. He gives Athos a nod – no one else can hear this unless they’ve actually got their ear to the door. “Start there, maybe.”

Milady blinks, then nods. “Alright. Nearly everything I said was bullshit.”

D’Artagnan groans and lets his head fall forward into his arms. “Of course it was,” he says, voice muffled. “Do you even know _how_ to tell the truth?”

“Think of it as a challenge to your detective skills,” Milady says, unbothered. Athos gives her a look, though, and after a moment she sighs and adds, “A few things were true. Armand and Rochefort were arguing, I don’t know why. And right after he died, Rochefort came to me wanting files.”

“Right away? You said he only asked for files a week ago,” d’Artagnan says.

“Yes. What bit of ‘nearly all lies’ was too complex for you? Do I need to use shorter words?” Milady asks, using her talking-to-idiots voice again. Again, a look from Athos, and again, she stops taunting him and returns to the question at hand. Clearly, however little she thinks of the rest of them, she still retains some respect for her ex-husband. “So he requested the files, and I said no. Then Rochefort turned up at our office with six of his brawniest thugs and asked more insistently.”

“And you gave them to him,” Porthos prods.

“Of course not,” Milady says, sounding faintly annoyed. “I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to actually kill me, not in broad daylight in my offices. He might be a psychopath, but no one’s that dumb. That’s when he pulled out that file on me and said he’d keep it buried if I unlocked the computer for him and opened our file safe.” She shrugs. “I lost my temper and said some things, he lost his temper and did some things -”

“What things?” Athos says, jumping in with the question slightly too urgently.

Milady shifts her gaze from Porthos to him. “When I made that comment about Rochefort getting off on the idea of choking me and spitting on me the other day, it wasn’t exactly a stab in the dark.” She shakes her head as if honestly bewildered. “What is it about me that makes everyone go for the throat?”

Athos face twitches with some unrecognisable emotion and he stands up and turns away, fists clenched.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” d’Artagnan asks.

“I don’t want you to answer anything,” Milady says, and now he has no doubt she’s being honest. “You don’t have a lot to add to the conversation, really. Anyway, I unlocked the computer, I opened the safe, and of course he got his people to delete every electronic file and burn every paper file we had. On everyone, not just him. He even found the versions hidden on the cloud. If Armand had backups hidden anywhere else, they were hidden from me as well – he never was too fond of the idea of me having copies of information about our clients. I think he was probably worried what I’d do with them.”

“Smart of him,” Porthos says. “Think I can guess the rest of this story. You decided you didn’t want Rochefort to have you on a string forever, so you made a plan to get the folder from him using us as pawns, and that’s how we ended up with your file. Makes sense. Doesn’t help a lot, but makes sense. If the Captain was willing to make a deal with you, though, clearly there’s more.”

“I didn’t really question how Rochefort got the information on me at the time,” she says. “I was so pissed off by what he’d done it didn’t seem to matter. But when you look at it – there’s a lot of details. The kind of details that had to come from someone who was there.”

Athos comes back to the table. “That man in the picture with you. He knows Rochefort as well.”

“Yes, I overheard that. I can’t imagine how.” She raises her hands at their sceptical looks. “No, really, I have no idea. Anyway, his name’s Sarazin. He thinks he’s some kind of king of the criminal underworld. He’s also a kind of criminal renaissance man – he dabbles in just about everything. I worked for him for a long time. As you’ve probably figured out by now, I was a thief, a damn good one.”

“Is that… all?” Porthos says, clearly trying to be as tactful as possible, which isn’t his normal method of interrogation. 

“Yes, thanks, that’s all,” Milady says sharply, divining what he means. “Not that it’s relevant in any way, or your business in the slightest. He didn’t whore me out. He had other girls for that. Anyway, Sarazin and his crew have a lot of connections, all around the country. In the time when I worked with him, he didn’t normally bother to hire hitmen – much too expensive. He had plenty of thugs. But there was this one politician he wanted taken care of, and then later a city judge, and he went out and hired proper assassins for them.”

“Francesco Garcia and Sofia Martinez,” Athos says. He rakes a hand through his hair, an uncharacteristically expressive gesture for him. “So that’s how you know them. And you think this Sarazin will still know how to find them? It’s been what, a decade?”

“I wouldn’t have assumed that, except now we know Sarazin knows Rochefort, and that someone Rochefort was angry at got killed in the exact way Sarazin’s former contractors like to kill people,” Milady spells out. “Rochefort got the information about me from Sarazin, although I’m not sure how he asked for it without clueing Sarazin in on where I am, but he must have gotten other information from him as well.”

“How do you know he didn’t tell Sarazin where you were?”

“I’d know,” Milady says. “It would be hard to miss. Anyway, so Rochefort got that file from Sarazin. My guess is he got Sofia’s number from Sarazin as well, and hired her and her boyfriend to kill Armand. So all we need is Francesco and Sofia and the whole thing unravels.”

“And Sarazin will help you contact them?”

“Oh, no,” Milady says with a slight smile. “After all, he’s the one who wants me dead.”

X_X_X_X

There’s a long pause while they digest this. She can see Athos give that little facial twitch he gave when she mentioned Rochefort trying to strangle her. It seems he doesn’t like the idea of people besides him trying to hurt her.

“What’d you do? Forget to give your two weeks’ notice?” Porthos asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Creative differences,” she drawls, and fists her hands in her lap instead of letting one touch her choker, because she’s not going to act like she’s frightened in front of these idiots. She’s actually not sure if she is really frightened, although remembering who she was back then always triggers her a little. Five years ago the thought of Sarazin petrified her, but she’s spent those five years working for someone who buys and sells men like Sarazin without a flicker of fear. Surely, she can look at Sarazin now and see him as just a thug. Armand Richelieu was dangerous in ways that would never even occur to Sarazin. And Athos… well, Athos is dangerous to her as well, more dangerous than Sarazin could ever be.

She shakes off her thoughts and continues. “Anyway, now you know his name, maybe you can find him. I’m sure he’ll give up Francesco and Sofia if it’ll give him an advantage. Hell, he might even have enough evidence to take Rochefort down without us needing to chase after them… although the man’s usually more careful than that. Regardless, Sarazin will know _something_ that helps you get Rochefort.”

“You’ve just said he’s a pimp, a thief, is in organised crime, and is responsible for at least two deaths,” d’Artagnan says in disbelief. “Whatever deal _you’ve_ managed to con people into, no one’s going to offer him one like that.”

“So offer him one chicken dinner a week in prison, or something,” Milady snaps. She never thought for one moment they’d let Sarazin go free, which is a damn good thing for her. “Wine that isn’t made in a toilet. Hell, threaten him with police brutality, I don’t care. So long as you get the information you need out of him.”

Athos stares at her. She can tell he still thinks her plan to fulfil her end of the deal with Treville is foolish and unlikely to work. It’s a good thing he doesn’t know her back-up plan. Obviously, she’ll have to enlist his help with it if the Musketeers can’t find Sarazin on their own, but she’d rather not. She has no idea why she came back. She could be halfway across the world by now. But once she had an excuse to come back, she couldn’t stop herself, she couldn’t leave it like that. She just couldn’t.

The rest of them stare at her too, like they’re waiting for her to give them more. For God’s sake, they have three names to chase up, don’t they? Do they really expect her to do everything?

Apparently they do.

Eventually she rolls her eyes and says, “Get me a fucking notebook or something, I’ll write down a few facts about Sarazin to get you started. Old locations, contacts, whatever. I’ll even throw in all the wild rumours I’ve heard about our Spanish Mr and Mrs Smith. Meanwhile, maybe you could go and try to detect some things? I’ve heard you’re supposed to be good at that.”

Athos gestures to d’Artagnan and Porthos, but he stays behind. “There’s a lot of gaps in your story,” he comments as the door closes behind them.

“No, are there? How frustrating that must be for you,” Milady says, making no effort to sound sympathetic.

“Why does Sarazin want you dead? Really?”

Milady hesitates. She definitely wouldn’t have told him in front of the others, but it’s not like anything she ever says is likely to change Athos’s view of her. Still, she has some pride, and it’s not exactly a nice story. Nothing like the sweet little storybook tale she’d once given him as her backstory, certainly. “He has abandonment issues,” she says dryly, but this time her hand is on her choker before she knows she’s done it and when she pulls it away she realises she’s shaking very slightly.

Athos’s gaze drops to her neck. “He did that?” he asks, sounding sickened.

“A garotte,” she says. Long years have worn down the hatred and anger in her tone to cool detachment. She forces herself to still the shaking in her fingers. “He sent me and a few others to break into a house. We were supposed to come out with a diamond pendant, but we didn’t. He thought I stole it. He went a bit far trying to get me to admit to it, but I survived, and then I left.”

“That fucking bastard,” he says, but the look he gives her contains as much reproval as sympathy. “You should’ve gone to the cops. Why didn’t you?”

She could break his judgmental attitude in a moment by reminding him he has very good reason to be grateful she doesn’t go to the cops for things like that. In some ways, her memory of Sarazin’s attack is overshadowed by her memory of her husband’s. She can still remember Athos’s hands around her throat, bruising, horrifically painful. She’d struggled against him, clawing at his arms, kicking out helplessly, but he had just kept pressing, and she couldn’t breathe, and her vision was filling with spots of colour, and her lungs burned, and she thought she was dying. She’d passed in and out of consciousness for the last few seconds, and she’d been sure of it, sure that this was it, and that the last thing she’d see was the face of the only person in the world she loved filled with absolute hatred for her.

In the emotional sense it was far worse, but physically it had felt nearly exactly like when Sarazin pulled a wire around her throat and pulled it tight for an audience of their entire crew, and the aftermath had been shockingly like that too. When Athos finally stepped back, letting her go, she couldn’t feel her limbs. She couldn’t feel anything but the agony in her throat and lungs, the tears in her eyes, the sharp pain radiating through her. She almost crawled her way out of the house, barely able to control her body, completely unable to control her panic. He looked almost as panicked, she remembers that clearly, as if he was just as horrified and confused by what had happened as she was despite how drunk her was, but that didn’t matter nearly as much as her need to just _go_.

She’d gotten perhaps fifty feet from the house before she collapsed completely. Her initial thought, when she could form thoughts at all, was that it was a panic attack – she’d gotten them before, but never so badly, completely unable to move or think or act or even breathe. And part of it might’ve been a panic attack, but when a woman heading home from a night out saw her and called an ambulance, she found out at the hospital that he’d also bruised her windpipe and vocal cords so badly it took weeks to heal. Her voice was a croak for a long time after. However, the real danger was the rapid swelling of her throat, which had constricted her airway to the point that if she hadn’t been found so soon, she could have completely lost consciousness and maybe even have suffered brain damage. 

She can remember how helpless she felt in that hospital, and that bit was also exactly like when Sarazin had hurt her. The continuous lies she wrote when the police gave her a paper and pen and asked what happened – an unknown assailant, a random attack, a person she couldn’t really describe and certainly couldn’t identify. Lies that it was obvious no one believed, and in her sensitive state, every pitying stare stung painfully. The area hospital was well outside of Pinon, so there wasn’t much chance of Athos turning up unless the region cops went to their local equivalents for help (which from her time as a cop’s wife, she knew was unlikely), but she still tensed every time the door opened. She gave a fake name and told them she was homeless, which was more or less true at the time –it never even crossed her mind to tell the truth, have Athos charged for what he did, get him fired, anything like that, even though by that point her pain and heartbreak was already crystallising into rage.

She’d betrayed him, of course she had – completely and heartbreakingly. But his actions were a betrayal too, and in a life studded with casual violence and cruelty, he’d been the last person she’d ever expected to give her more of that. And spitting at her how disgusting she was, how worthless she was, how much he hated her, while his hands tightened around the scarred throat he’d only ever touched with tenderness before – well, it was worse than her worst nightmares. It was worse than anything. But it was terrible in a way that was completely between them, was oddly private, in fact, and so she hadn’t brought anyone else into it. She’d let her fury stew, because it was better than guilt, because what he’d done wasn’t okay, and she wasn’t okay, and nothing would ever be okay again.

Humiliation fed it, because even after everything, even after how badly he’d hurt and scared her, she missed him and she loved him just as desperately as ever, and clearly, he didn’t feel the same. However unforgivable her actions were, it _hurt_ to know he could so easily excise her from his life, abandon her entirely and decide that everything they’d ever had was a lie. It made her feel worthless, thrown away, and she knew that was unfair but it didn’t stop her feeling it. So she turned grief and guilt and hurt to rage, the same way she’d once turned fear to rage, because that was the best way to survive.

And now they sit across the table from each other, both burning with guilt and rage and grief, and it doesn’t seem like surviving at all. 

“I didn’t feel like it,” she says now, as if that’s any kind of answer at all. Sarazin would’ve found her in a second if she’d gone to the cops, but she hadn’t had that excuse when Athos hurt her, so she decides maybe she just doesn’t like the police. Except for one, once, obviously. “Sarazin wouldn’t have been arrested, anyway. I didn’t count as a very reliable witness at the time, and no one else would’ve backed me up.”

“And he’s still looking for a necklace a decade later?” Athos seems to be trying to school his expression back to blankness, but it’s not working too well. His eyes show all his emotions too clearly, his horror, his fury, his disgust, his pity. “Seems an overreaction.”

“No, I told you, he has abandonment issues,” Milady says. She thinks she should probably stop explaining, but she can’t. It occurs to her that for six years a part of her has longed to tell Athos everything, and now that there’s no reason not to, it comes spilling out. “That wasn’t a joke, sadly. He’s still angry I left him. Though I suppose he’d say he was heartbroken.”

Athos blinks, takes a step back. “You two were… I thought you said he had other girls for that.”

“No, I said he didn’t whore me out,” Milady replies with a slight shrug. “He didn’t. He kept me for himself. Oh, stop it with the look of horror. I’m allowed to have exes, you know.”

“You were, what, a teenager then? Fifteen, maybe, judging by the picture, or even younger,” Athos says, keeping his voice even with what looks like a strain. “And he must be at least twenty years older than you. Hardly an ‘ex’.”

“Actually, at first he was a client.” She gives a small, slightly twisted smile at his look of absolute disgust. “Again, all I said was that _he_ didn’t whore me out. But before I met him I used to pick pockets and turn tricks and all those other things you do when you’re on the street and don’t want to be.”

“I’m… sorry.”

“For fuck’s sake, Athos, don’t look at me like that. I said I’m a former prostitute and petty thief, not a terminal cancer patient,” Milady sighs her breath out in a huff, annoyed. “I wasn’t some… pathetic victim. I was very poor, I wanted to be very rich, and I did what I could to make that happen. Then one day I tried to steal from one of my regulars when I saw he had rolls of cash in his pocket, and he caught me, and instead of beating the shit out of me he offered me a job. Also a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in. I had to share the bed with him, but, well, I’ve had worse.”

“You were a _child_ ,” Athos insists, apparently not twigging to the fact that she really doesn’t want to think of herself as being any kind of victim. Sure, she’ll play the victim on occasion if that will give her an advantage, but that doesn’t make her one.

Milady de Winter is perfectly aware that what Sarazin did was wrong, and that her childhood was messed up, and that no one should ever treat a teenager that way. If it was someone else, she’d probably pity them as well, think how badly used they were and how they never really had a chance. But she doesn’t want to think of herself that way. She knows who she is. She’s tough and smart and ruthless and surely, _surely_ everything she did was her own choice. Even back then she looked at the other girls around and felt sorry for them and superior to them at the same time. She wasn’t a victim. Other people were her victims, and some of them just didn’t realise it yet, that was all. That’s the way she prefers to see it, anyway, and she won’t let the sympathy in Athos’s eyes change that. That she was technically a child back then doesn’t matter at all.

“I was probably at least twenty by the time it really went sour, actually. Anyway, whatever I was, I wasn’t stupid enough to stick around once garrottes got involved,” Milady says dryly. “I’m fine with most kink, but that felt like a step too far. So I left him. I knew he had some dirty cops he was friends with though so I had to make sure I wasn’t picked up by them. I kept my head down, moved a lot, changed my name frequently…” 

“That’s why you had a fake name when you met me,” Athos says, head jerking up, eyes wide as he stares at her. “You were on the run from him. You could have told me that, you know. I thought it was so you – I wouldn’t have – you could have told me. You should have. How did you make a living?”

“My God, did you finally remember that some of us don’t have a money tree in the backyard?” she mocks, but the joke comes out gentle and, oddly, almost fond. God, they’re fucked up. “I didn’t have any experience or references. Mostly I got by working as an escort – and again with the look of horror. Could you stop it, please? There’s nothing inherently horrifying about sex work. It can be boring, a little disgusting, and on occasion dangerous, but I expect you can say all those things about your job.”

“My job isn’t illegal.”

“Oh, the horror,” she says sarcastically, at least grateful he didn’t pull the ‘immoral’ card this time. “Anyway, after a few years jumping from place to place, a nice gentleman who sometimes paid me for my time agreed to say I used to be his secretary and give me a reference, and I used that to get a similar job with a small town lawyer named Thomas de la Fere. It seemed safer than being an escort, it promised security, and it was even legal. And Pinon was so lovely. It seemed like a good place to lay low… and then I met you.”

“And then you met me,” Athos murmurs. The look he turns on her is filled with sympathy, which she doesn’t like, and hurt, which she likes even less. “You could have told me all this then.”

“No, I couldn’t have,” she says, suddenly angry. He says that like it was all so simple, like it would have fixed everything. It wouldn’t have. “Telling you would have ruined my life. If I’d told you, you would’ve wanted me to turn myself in, testify against Sarazin, do the _right thing_ , even if it had no chance of working. And if I didn’t agree to do that, you probably would have arrested me, you were so dedicated to your _duty_ to the law. I would’ve gone to jail. Nothing I did was past the statute of limitations then. You would’ve wrecked my life, maybe even gotten me killed.”

He looks at her and then looks away, a tacit admission that she’s not entirely wrong.

“You were also a lot less jaded back then, and my past would have horrified you a _lot_ more,” she continues remorselessly. “And given how much it’s clearly horrifying you right now... pardon _me_ for not wanting my husband to look at me like you just were.”

“I see. It’s good to know you’ve justified all your lies so easily,” he bites out, clearly wanting to be done with this conversation. She can see how close to the edge he is, how filled with hatred. Is it hatred for her or for himself? Impossible to tell, with Athos. Perhaps both. “You didn’t want me to give you a _nasty look_. Sorry, I should’ve realised.”

“You really think this is just about that?” she says, and her voice is half anger and half hurt, and the combination’s not a nice one. “I _loved_ you back then, you asshole. I didn’t want to lose you, didn’t want to hurt you. That was reason number one, ahead of everything else. If you’d found out, you would have felt betrayed, trapped, would have felt you had to choose between me and your job – and we both know it was much more to you than a job. I didn’t want to force you to make that choice… and that wasn’t just because we both know what you would’ve chosen.”

“You _did_ hurt me,” he says in a voice that manages to be broken and cutting at the same time, like shards of glass. He looks back at her with fury and heartbreak in his eyes. “Or did you forget that? Apparently you managed to get over your fears about ‘losing’ me. You didn’t have any problem breaking us. So forgive me if I don’t believe concern for my _feelings_ was your main motivation for not coming clean.”

She knows he’s lashing out because she just made him feel guilty. It’s fascinating how sometimes guilt makes him crumble to pieces, and other times it makes him ten times as vicious.

But then, it’s hard to blame him for it, when she’s the same. “Oh, _I_ broke us? You really want to have this conversation again?”

“What I did was wrong, incredibly wrong, but it was in the heat of the moment, and I was _not_ the one who ruined our relationship,” he spits the words at her. “That would be you, _Milady_. You’re the one who betrayed everything we had.”

“Actually, it’s good we’ve had this talk now, because it means I can finally give you some actual _context_ about what happened back then,” she spits back, well aware she’s about to slam him with this revelation in a deliberately hurtful way, and feeling a strange sort of dark glee about that mingling with her pain and anger. Right now she wants to hit him hard, wants to really hurt him. She just opened up to him, told him things about her past no one else knows, was the closest she ever gets to being vulnerable, and he thinks the right response is to lay a guilt trip on her? Fuck him. She might be at fault, but so is he, and she’s damned if she’ll take sole blame for everything that went wrong.

“I’m sorry about your tragic past, I really am,” he says, with deliberate cruelty, voice gradually rising to nearly a yell as he keeps talking. “But if you really think that a _terrible childhood_ somehow gets you off the hook for _fucking my brother_ -”

The noise at the door is barely audible, a smothered gasp, but it’s just enough to make Athos break off. They both freeze for a second, and then Milady strides over to it, buoyed by the fury humming through her veins, and yanks it open. D’Artagnan hasn’t had time to back away more than a few steps.

“What?” Athos thunders.

D’Artagnan turns, almost comically dismayed, and holds up a notebook and pen rather lamely. “Um… she wanted… you said you… I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, I was just waiting for you to stop shouting…”

Athos looks like he wants to keep yelling, but instead he says curtly, “Give it to her, then,” and Milady can _see_ how close he comes to adding a cutting comment along the lines of _again_ or _I hear you’re good at that_ , even though d’Artagnan isn’t really the one he wants to hurt, he’s just an idiot who’s wandered into the firing line. Athos manages to reign himself in, though, not saying another word to either of them as he storms off down the corridor.

D’Artagnan passes her the notebook and pen, and the look he gives her as he does so is pure poison, lips pursed in sanctimonious judgement and eyes filled with indignant fury. She’s not sure how long he was there or how much else he heard, but clearly Athos’s last line made it through the thick door.

“Something else you wanted to give me?” she asks venomously in response. “Another lecture about fidelity, perhaps? And how is Madame Bonacieux these days, may I ask?”

“A good person,” he flares up. “You should give it a try sometime.”

“What, fucking a good person? I’ll keep an eye out,” she says. “I haven’t seen any recently, though. Now, leave me alone before I _make_ you leave me alone.”

He does, but that’s worse, because now there’s no one to take out her fury on, just her and a notebook, a pen, and her past.


	7. Off the Cuff

“Come on,” Porthos says, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice. “You gotta know more than that.”

“What, that’s not enough for you?” Flea rolls her eyes at him. “Well aren’t you picky. I know the name, sure. Most people will know his name. But he moved up out of our circles a while ago. Or down, I s’pose. All depends on your outlook, doesn’t it?”

He sighs and buys her another drink, which she drains before disappearing. Once, she would’ve kissed him goodbye, but now she’s officially listed as one of his CIs so it’s inappropriate.

He’s struck out with every CI he’s got – well, information wise. Not struck out as in tried to hit on and been turned down. He tries to be professional with his CIs. Friendly, but not inappropriate friendly. With Flea sometimes it’s hard to remember not to cross that line though. He’s known her since they practiced picking locks together as kids. Later they practiced more.

He trudges back to the precinct.

“Got anything?” Aramis asks hopefully.

“More of the same. Everyone’s heard of him,” Porthos says. “The name, at least. But they don’t know anything useful. It’s all ‘oh I heard he did this job’ and ‘I think he used to work with that person’. Nothing concrete. This could take forever.”

“Milady’s helpful information booklet is also turning out to be surprisingly unhelpful,” Aramis says, holding it up. “And the insults she wrote in the margins are gradually robbing me of self esteem, too.”

“She did say it was all a decade out of date,” Porthos says fairly. “A crime boss stays in the same place ten years, that’s a stupid crime boss. And if he was that stupid he’d have been caught already. What about the videos of Richelieu’s house?” When they find the assassins, they’ll get a lot further a lot quicker if they have something real to threaten them with, like video evidence of them at Richelieu’s place.

“We’ve watched over a hundred hours of footage so far,” Aramis says with a faint sigh. “From half a dozen different angles, I’ve gotten to watch Richelieu reading a first edition set of the Count of Monte Cristo, which makes me wince, given how much that must be worth. And all of his books are like that. His bookshelf is probably worth more than our houses combined.”

“Nothing else interesting?”

“I’m sorry, did I say that was interesting?” Aramis asks, deadpan. “No, the only other thing happening is his psycho of a cat attacking everything. Including the cameras.”

“Huh, didn’t have him down as a cat person,” Porthos comments.

“Adele used to mention the cat regularly, actually,” Aramis says. “Name’s Francois. Born in the pits of hell and raised by Satan, according to her. Nearly lose her finger thanks to it once. But he seems fond enough of the thing.”

“Athos turn up yet?”

“Still off talking to Organised Crime,” Aramis says. “And d’Artagnan’s either liaising with Vice or having a quickie, possibly both.” He and Constance are still weeks out from their wedding, but they seem to be starting the honeymoon a little early. Actually, _very_ early, since they could only get time off together for an actual honeymoon in three months’ time.

“What about Milady?”

“Disappeared an hour ago leaving a note saying she’d be at the wine bar round the corner.” Aramis shrugs at Porthos’s quick, suspicious glance. “I checked and she was, just like yesterday. Told the bartender to call me if she goes anywhere, but she looked pretty settled in. Maybe more drew her and Athos together than a shared love of calling the rest of us idiots on a regular basis.”

“I think she knows more than she’s telling,” Porthos says bluntly. “Has something up her sleeves. She told us a lot the other day, but she’s not the kind of person who shares everything. She has some plan.”

“You think she’s screwing us over again? It’s starting to get repetitive.”

“Nah, I think she’s waiting to see what we come up with,” Porthos says. “That’s my guess. Could be she’s laying a trail like she did with Vargas, thinking we’ll charge in and fuck it up again without her needing to do a thing, but I can’t think why she’d want us to fail.” 

“Unless she really likes jail,” Aramis agrees. “She changed hotels again today, you know.”

“That’s some next level paranoia,” Porthos says approvingly.

“Captain’s not a fan, I’ll tell you that,” Aramis says. “He says he’s going to have real difficulty explaining receipts from half a dozen different places in the departmental budget, not to mention having to notify the DA’s office of her new address every day. She’s torn a few shreds off him for telling them her address, too. _Very_ paranoid, she is.”

“We need a new plan,” Porthos says, returning to the original conversation. “We’re getting nowhere like this.”

“You’re not wrong,” Athos says, appearing at the door. He looks both exhausted and annoyed. “Where’s my… where’s Anne? Milady, I mean.”

“Wine bar again,” Aramis tells him.

“I think it’s time we give in and ask her what her plan is,” Athos says gloomily. 

“You think she’s got one too?” Porthos says, glad he’s not alone in his suspicion.

“Oh, I _know_ she’s got one,” Athos says. “I also know we won’t like it. Or at the very least, I won’t like it. She doesn’t even seem a fan of whatever it is. She hasn’t had that air of smugness she gets when she’s looking forward to showing her hand. The wine isn’t a good sign, either. She doesn’t drink red wine when she’s in a good mood, only when she’s stressed.”

“Threat of ten years in jail, I’d be stressed too,” Porthos says, inwardly concerned about Athos’s matter-of-fact tone of voice as he lists off information about Milady de Winter as if they’re still a married couple instead of at each other’s throats.

Actually, they haven’t been at each other’s throats the past couple of days, but since that’s only because they’ve been doing their damnedest to avoid being in the same room, that’s not exactly comforting. Porthos has no clue what happened, but neither of them seem able to look at each other right now. 

Milady is leaning slightly over her table when they get there, in the process of being chatted up by a man who looks far too enthralled with her. She’s half a bottle of red wine down, which wouldn’t normally be impressive, except that it’s still daytime and Porthos has a sneaking suspicion it’s not her first. They’ve made deals with criminals before in exchange for help, but except for Bonnaire, this is the first time one of them has all but abandoned the case to get tipsy and flirt with strangers. Most people are a little more concerned about the potential jailtime. She’s also technically in protective custody, but since she seems to rate their protection somewhat lower than owning a poodle as a guard dog, that hasn’t affected her behaviour much.

She looks amused by the man’s presence, but in a distant, vague sort of way, like she forgets he’s there when he’s not talking, more focused on staring into her wine. But the second she spots Athos, her eyes narrow for a moment and she tilts her chin so the man can see right down the front of her loose top, then angles herself so she can look up at him admiringly. She doesn’t appear to be wearing a bra and the man looks like he can’t believe his luck.

“Wonderful,” Athos mutters to himself, but the sarcastic quip can’t distract from the way every muscle in his body has tensed like a man on the edge. He raises his voice. “Milady, we need your help upstairs. Now.”

“I don’t suppose you could give me another twenty minutes,” Milady purrs, not taking her eyes off the unfortunate man across from her. She leans over very purposefully and rests her hand on his leg.

“Little optimistic, aren’t you?” Athos says, raising an eyebrow at her. It’s almost casual, the way he says it, but there’s nothing casual about the feeling in the air. They’re not glaring at each other, their tones aren’t angry in any way, but there’s fury there, and somehow it’s more unnerving for being so completely veiled. Porthos has the strange feeling that if whatever silent communication is going on between them goes badly, the bar might not survive the battle. The wine bottle definitely won’t.

Milady turns to face Athos now, raising an eyebrow as well so their expressions mirror each other, the man across from her forgotten – if he wasn’t already. There’s something bitter about the twist of her lip, like she’s bit into something sour. “Underestimating me?”

“Never,” he says. “I have no doubt that you can get anyone to go anywhere in twenty minutes. What I doubt is that you’ll enjoy the trip.” He doesn’t glance at the man. Really, he doesn’t have to.

Porthos would normally be amused by the conversation, but unfortunately he’s still stuck being deeply uncomfortable and tensed in preparation for something to go wrong. It’s like watching a man fight a tiger – fascinating and intense, but still better seen from a distance. Milady’s lips slide into a smile that seems genuinely entertained, acknowledging the hit, but there’s still rage lurking below it.

The amount of unhealthy, unspoken emotions in this room are giving Porthos a headache. The sooner they finish this case and get Milady out of Athos’s life, the better.

The man says to her, “This your boyfriend or what, babe?”

“Or what,” she says, leaning on his leg either for balance or to torture Athos and rising with a surprising amount of grace considering the aforementioned wine. “Thanks for the drink. I’m sure you can finish by yourself.”

“Hey, now come on -”

The man’s not too bright, Porthos thinks. Athos’s stance screams ‘policeman’ in or out of uniform, and Porthos probably has half his weight again, and he still thinks grabbing at a woman’s arm and trying to physically keep her in place in front of them is a good idea.

Before either of them can react, though, Milady lets out a sigh. Her hand on his leg shifts about five inches, then _squeezes_. It’s not a nice squeeze. In fact, it’s amazing the man doesn’t keel over. He does go alarmingly white. “Let me go, please,” she says with an air of boredom. The man does, extremely quickly, letting out a low, pained noise. Porthos winces. “There. Politeness is so important. A valuable lesson to learn.” She releases him and stands up, and this time the man isn’t stupid enough to try and stop her. Impressively, though, he still looks halfway in love with her, staring after her poleaxed even as he bends over in pain.

Athos goes to the door and holds it open for her with an ironic sweep of his arm.

“It was all that naked flesh,” Porthos tells her as they exit, trying not to look down her top himself. He’s not interested in her like that – he has better self-preservation instincts than the man in the bar, and ‘will happily kill you in your sleep’ has never been his type – but she’s a short woman compared to him and that top is extremely low. “Gives men like that ideas.”

“Good thing I’m stuck with men like you two, then,” Milady says, deliberately brushing past Athos as she leaves the bar. He winces at her touch like it physically pains him.

“My God, it never ends,” Athos mutters, too quietly for anyone but Porthos to hear.

They take her into the station through the back entrance – she’s made a few dirty jokes about that, but thankfully seems to finally be running out – because while it’s unlikely whatever cop friends Sarazin has are in their area, it’s not impossible. They’re not precisely hiding her or the investigation, but they are keeping it pretty quiet. Well, as quiet as they can manage, anyway.

“I told you she hadn’t run for Hawaii,” Aramis says when they turn up again, looking up from the little notebook Milady wrote everything down in.

“Of course I didn’t,” Milady says, looking offended. “They extradite. I’d head for Vanuatu.”

“Thank you for letting us know, at least,” Aramis says, as if she’d tell them anywhere she has the slightest plan to run to – unless it’s a double bluff, anyway. Aramis holds up the notebook. “Is part of this in code?”

“If I tell you, how will you learn?” Milady says in an eminently reasonable tone. Then she peers at the page he’s got it open to. “Oh. No, that’s not code. I just wrote that bit yesterday after a bottle of wine. It’s a rude poem in English. It’s inspired by d’Artagnan, actually, though really it’s more like a review in limerick form. The constructive criticism could help him in his future liaisons, or at least help whoever he’s with. There was a young fellow from Gascony -”

“Enough of this,” Athos says, forcefully enough that they all look at him. “Anne, we can spend the next few months looking for Sarazin or your assassins. In fact, since we’re paid by the day, we can spend the next ten years doing it. But what’s the deadline the DA’s office gave you? Remind me.”

She looks at him, blinks, tilts her gaze to the ceiling and doesn’t reply.

“Exactly. So I think it’s about time you share your plans. And I’m not talking about what brand of wine you’re planning to drink tomorrow. Talk. Now.”

“So masterful,” she drawls. “I love it when you get all dominant.” 

Porthos can see the vein in Athos’s forehead throbbing and for a second he thinks Athos will lose it, but instead his friend inhales, exhales, and repeats that several times, before replying through gritted teeth. “Anne. I said _enough_.” This time there is a guttural quality to his voice that makes him sound more pained than threatening, and Milady returns her gaze to him.

She sighs theatrically. “Boys, boys, boys. You’re chasing someone who’s chasing me. Surely it must have occurred to you there’s a simpler solution.”

There is a long pause where they all stare at her, and then Athos says, voice low, “No.”

“Oh come on, it’s the obvious next step.”

“We’re not using you as _bait_ , Anne!” Athos says, voice rising. “For God’s sake, that’s totally unethical -”

“It’s nothing you haven’t done before,” Milady points out. “Besides, since when do you care about my safety? Look on the bright side, if anything happens, you’d be rid of me forever.”

“I said I wanted you gone from _my_ life, not gone from life in general!” Athos snaps.

“You said Sarazin’s trying to kill you,” Porthos interrupts, studying Milady and considering the plan. “You want us to trap whoever he sends, interrogate them for his location?”

“Or fake your death,” Aramis says, getting into the spirit of things. He’s brightening visibly at the thought of never having to try and decode Milady’s notes again. “A bulletproof vest, some fake blood – we’ve done that before as well.”

“Chancey, with a man who hires assassins, though,” Porthos muses. “I mean, ideal if he sent Sophia and Francesco, but when’s our luck ever that good, eh?” 

“I actually thought we could let him kidnap me,” Milady says. When they all look at her again, she shrugs. “He’d prefer to have me abducted than killed, if he thought he could manage it. And I could probably get him to say a few things about Sofia and Francesco once I’m there. Sarazin always has liked to talk. It would save you weeks of dealing with his lawyers and processing deals and rubbish like that.”

“No.” Athos says again in a stony voice, this time making it an order.

“Well, that settles that, doesn’t it?” Aramis murmurs sarcastically, because they all know that whatever Athos thinks of the plan, it’s the best one they have.

“You could have suggested this earlier,” Porthos mutters to Milady.

“I didn’t want you to feel useless,” she says in tones of utmost reason. “After all, there was always a chance you’d find something.”

“Right, you were worried about our self-worth, that’s it. How did I not guess?” Porthos keeps a wary eye on Athos, who’s pacing again.

“That and you’re all so _cute_ when you’re floundering. I suppose I just have a thing for hopeless cases,” she shrugs. He can see she’s watching Athos warily as well, although she’s doing her best to hide it. “It’s a flaw.”

“And what if he kills you on sight?” Athos throws the words at her like a grenade, ignoring their digression into worried banter.

“Hmm, I don’t know,” she gives him a thoughtful look up and down. “You do look quite good in black. But is full mourning really appropriate for exes?”

“This isn’t a _joke_ , Anne!”

Milady sighs. “He won’t kill me without monologuing about it for half an hour first, it’s not his style. Once he starts on that, you’ll hear it over the listening device – my one, not yours, because trust me mine are better – and you can burst in and bring the light of law and justice or whatever it is you do.”

“And we’ll know where you are?” Aramis asks.

“My trackers are very good as well,” Milady says. “Honestly, everything I have is better than yours. You should just assume that.”

“You wound me, Milady,” Aramis says, putting a hand to his heart, trying to diffuse some of the tension. It’s a fool’s errand, though, Porthos could have told him that. This tension isn’t going anywhere.

“No,” Athos says again. “I won’t allow it.”

“Good thing it’s not your choice to make, then,” Milady says with a shrug. “Run it past Treville. We’ll see if he allows it.”

Athos stares at her, eyes burning with absolute fury at her going over his head. “I can’t deal with you right now,” he says in a low, strained voice, and then he’s striding out of the precinct, slamming the door so hard as he goes that the noise makes them all wince.

“Well, that went well,” Aramis says brightly to no one in particular.

X_X_X_X

In hindsight, she shouldn’t have put her hand on that man’s leg. Not because it was petty – she’s absolutely fine with being petty, she’s already filled the sugar container in their break room with salt and swapped the letters ‘e’ and ‘r’ on d’Artagnan’s keyboard just for the hell of it – but because it was badly timed. He probably would have taken her plan much more in stride if he hadn’t already been pissed off. And the limerick about d’Artagnan – well, probably also a misstep. In her defence, her wine-induced poetry is actually pretty good, but Athos doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of humour about her sex life. Since she wouldn’t find it funny if he had one outside of barely resisting her, she should probably be more sympathetic.

She opens the door to her hotel room and freezes. There’s someone in here. The next moment, though, she relaxes slightly, recognising the way her skin prickles with anticipation. It’s Athos, not some random hired killer. No one else makes her body react like that. And he’s in her room. A room with a bed. Her mind goes straight to things she absolutely should not think, like how much a good, hard, angry fuck would help ease her current state of tension. Hell, maybe it would help him with his bad mood as well.

“I can’t believe Treville told you where I was,” she says to the dark room. “Hasn’t the man ever heard of ‘need to know’?”

“I needed to know,” Athos says. When she flicks the light on, she can see he’s still furious, but it’s slightly more contained than earlier. “Frankly, we should all know where you are all the time. It’s a safety issue.”

“I value my privacy.”

“Hah,” he huffs out a humourless laugh. “I’m sorry, exactly how many times have you broken into my house?”

She gives him a saccharine smile. “The current one? Twice. That you know of.”

“Treville said if you’re willing to risk yourself that way, he’ll agree to your plan,” Athos says flatly. He paces the room once, then visibly forces himself to still. “Which is why you’re going to tell him you’re not willing, that you’ve thought it through and realised how ridiculous, reckless and illogical your idea was.”

“Really? That doesn’t _sound_ like something I’d say,” she says coolly.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Anne!” His hands bunch into fists and he glowers at her, control starting to slip. “Do you even realise how _stupid_ this plan is? It’s even odds this psychopath sends someone to kill you instead of kidnap you.”

“Even odds are pretty good, actually. I’m doing it.”

Athos reacts to the comment like a shot from a starting pistol, surging forward suddenly and rounding on her, eyes blazing. Before she can breathe or respond in any way he’s crowding her, all intense and dangerous energy, so close he’s blocking out the rest of the world. He’s vibrating with absolute fury. Despite herself, she takes a step back and swallows hard, looking up at him.

“Are you crazy?” he accuses her furiously. “It was only a few days ago that you were telling me he _strangled_ you!”

“Garrotted,” she says helpfully, resisting the urge to point out he of all people should know the difference. If she says that, it would probably undercut his anger, but right now she’d prefer rage over guilt-induced misery. “That’s when they use a wire.”

He looks at her, eyes wild. “No. Don’t be cute about this.”

“Aww, you think -”

“Shut up. Just shut the fuck up, Anne,” he spells out. “If you do this, you’ll die. I thought survival was your mantra? Anything for that, didn’t you tell me?”

Milady raises her eyebrows, surprised. She did say that to him once. Of course, she yelled it while he was in the middle of drunkenly calling her a selfish, lying sociopath, so she hadn’t really expected him to have a clear memory of it. “I am doing whatever’s necessary for my survival,” she says. “I don’t want to go to jail.”

“You could have run!”

“I could have,” she admits, deciding not to point out that he should hardly be encouraging a criminal to flee. “But all my best contacts are here. I’ve had dozens of offers since Armand’s death, some quite lucrative. Not to mention my accounts. Not even I can keep everything in cash and jewellery. I have savings, I have superannuation, insurance, hell, I even rent out property, not to mention whatever I’ll get when Armand’s estate settles -” Although she’s keeping her fingers crossed she doesn’t inherit the cat. The thing’s pure evil.

“So what, this is all about _money_?” he rages, taking a few steps forward until he’s uncomfortably close to her.

Not _all_ , but she’s hardly going to say that, especially right now. Milady takes a step back, suddenly conscious that her breathing has sped up. He’s trying to intimidate her, but he’s only succeeding in turning her on. It’s a problem. He’s so close she can feel the heat emanating from him, but more than that, she can feel the fury, barely restrained. She can feel the lust, too. He’s wanted to lash out in some way since their conversation the other day.

She realises to her surprise that despite the nerves and anticipation she feels, despite the darkness in his eyes, she is completely, totally sure his hands won’t find her throat, however angry he is. And it’s not because he’s sober this time. It’s because now she’s seen how guilty he really feels about that one moment of madness, she can’t imagine him ever doing it again. He all but crumbled to the floor when she challenged him about it, cut off at the knees, devastation in every line of his face, guilt burning in his eyes like he was being immolated from the inside, every part of his body slumping. No, he won’t hurt her.

That doesn’t mean he won’t do other things to her, though, and she feels a dark thrill race through her body at the thought. This is why being around Athos fucks her up: if anyone else was doing this, she’d end the situation before it got too out of hand, before she ended up getting a panic attack. Because it’s Athos, there’s no chance of that happening: instead, it’s turning her on. He should be triggering to her, the worst trigger in the world, but no matter how hard she tries to remind herself of the terrible parts of their past, when he’s near her it’s easier to remember the blissful ones. He really does have an unfair advantage thanks to that.

“But then, everything’s all about money for you, isn’t it?” Athos spits.

He takes a step forward again. She takes a step back again. 

“You’ll die for your greed, is that it?” Hatred twists his voice to something choked and difficult to listen to. He sounds close to falling apart. “And that would be worth it for you? Never mind what it would do to anyone else.”

Another step forward. She’s against the wall now, nowhere to step back to. He takes another step forward anyway, trapping her there, flush against the wall, staring up at him with wide eyes. Her breathing is approaching hyperventilation now, her heart is pounding so hard she can hear it, and her mouth’s too dry for her to summon words. “I -”

“Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Athos says thickly, and now there is something really cruel in his gaze. She can always tell when he’s about to go for a low blow, and that’s the vibe she’s getting from him now. She wishes part of her wasn’t enjoying it so much, that the snakes writhing in her stomach were just from wariness. “I mean, I’ve personally experienced some of the _other_ things you’ll do for cash. But then I suppose there’s no fucking shortage of men in this city who’ve paid to -”

The slap shocks her nearly as much as him.

It’s not a weak hit. The crack echoes around the hotel room and leaves her hand stinging and red, though not nearly as much as his face, which it also knocks to the side. For a moment he stays like that, the drawn out silence worse than any response could be. Then when he turns his head slowly back to face her she almost cringes away from his gaze, which is black with rage.

His lip is bleeding. The blow must have cut it on one of his teeth. He reaches up very, very slowly to touch his index finger to the tiny wound, then holds it in front of him and examines the blood with a sort of frighteningly thoughtful curiosity. 

Then suddenly his bloody mouth is on hers, kissing her just as roughly, just as recklessly as he did in the closet. It’s not entirely identical to then because now she can taste the tang of his blood on her tongue, and it tastes like destruction, and she craves it. It’s an attack as much as an embrace, and she feels the answering surge of her own anger, her own rage, and pushes up onto her toes to meet his ferocity with her own. He yanks her harder against him with a fist in her hair, the sting of it making her cry out against his lips, but the cry is _”yes”_.

Milady claws at him, scrabbles at his clothes and then all but tears at his skin when it’s bare, leaving red lines all over his shoulders and back like she’s trying to write her name in scratches. She wants to tear him apart, she wants him to take her to pieces, she wants this lightning crackle of dark, rage-filled lust to take them over, she wants him inside her hard and hot and ruthless, she wants to bite him bloody, she wants him to bruise her. She wants everything and she wants it now and she wants it rough and nasty, because she wants to remember that she loathes him, and forget that she loves him.

Athos shoves her backwards and down onto the bed, and when she tries to rise up again he leans all his weight on the hand he’s got fisted in her hair so that her own hair is a rope pinning her head to the mattress. She tries to sink her teeth into his sore lip in punishment and he responds in kind, the two of them trying to bite and evade at the same time, two feral animals snarling and snapping at each other. Then he moves his head – she tries to follow and he twists her hair so that it brings tears to her eyes, holding her back – and he bites into the curve where her neck meets her shoulder, not a playful bite, a real one, and she jerks up against him and whimpers, desperate for him. She fumbles at his pants but he bats her hands away roughly with his own and takes hold of her skirt.

With two hard, economical tugs he rips the skirt off her instead of just pulling it up, and then he presses his fingers against her cunt through the thin, lacey panties she’s wearing, which are already soaked with need. The stiff, crinkled edges of the lace scrape against the hard bud of her clit as he rubs it, a pleasure that’s almost pain, and then it stretches and pulls tight everywhere else as he pushes the sopping lace inside her with his long fingers, forcing the abrasive fabric deep into her wetness so that she’s invaded by the rasp of it, and her hips slam up against the sensation, seeking more of it, more of him, more of his fingers, more of everything. Her fingernails draw blood on his back.

Athos hisses from the pain of it and removes his fingers from her, but only so he can wreck her underwear the same way he destroyed her skirt, snapping the thin confection of elastic and lace with a subdued twanging noise and discarding it. She thinks wildly that maybe he’ll tear everything she’s wearing apart on his mission to tear her apart as well, and if so, he’s more than fucking welcome to. The second the wet scrap of lace is torn away he releases her hair from his iron grip, moving down her body to lick into her. His movements are hard and relentless and he tongues against her clit like he’s roughly mouthing all the harsh, cruel insults he wants to hit her with against her cunt, giving her a tongue lashing in more ways than one.

Milady rides up against his face, grinding into it, grabbing his hair the way he did hers and refusing to release it. She doesn’t care if he suffocates against her so long as he finishes her off first and she holds him there as hard as she can, showing no mercy. He shows none either and fucks her with his tongue so relentlessly and so roughly that she’s seeing stars in moments, it’s too hard and fast for her body to deal with. After a few seconds of whimpering she untangles her clenched fingers from his hair to instead brace her hands on the bed for leverage against him, to try and push herself even harder into his mouth. She throws her head back so that it hits the wall and she doesn’t even register the impact, too caught up in the feel his tongue rubbing, writhing, _twisting_ against her, lapping at her hungrily, mouth working, always working. He returns his fingers as well, pistoning them into her, bypassing exploration for harsh, deep thrusts that bring her to the edge and push her over quickly into a confusing, overwhelming sunburst of ecstasy.

It’s like an explosion going off in her mind and body, the concussive force blasting her to pieces, coming so hard all her limbs ache with the unyielding force of it, her neck arched, her spine stiffening, every muscle tensing with sheer unmanageable pleasure. He keeps up his thrusting and licking against her, taking her further, breaking her further, until she’s sobbing and screaming with it, curling her fingers into the blankets so desperately she half-expects to claw through the mattress, writhing and squirming and pressing against his mouth and hands as he keeps her coming ruthlessly.

Athos is moving up her body before she’s anywhere close to recovering, still half-sobbing, breathless screams dying down to ragged gasps at the air that suddenly seems too thin, her body still racked with little aftershocks from it all. He yanks her top off over her head so her breasts are free to his gaze and then to his mouth, nipping at one with the same fury that’s been driving him all along, and she lets out a little yelp of shocked pain in response. He leaves a few other sets of teeth marks on her, each one winding her up again, her sore body seemingly already prepared for more.

She pushes him back impatiently so that she’s leaning over him and pulls his shirt over his head, then rips the zipper of his pants open so she can get to him. She shoves his pants down only as far as they need to go, lifting his cock out and returning her hands to his chest as she shifts further up his body to press all her wet heat against his erection, making him shudder. It’s five years since she’s seen him topless but she doesn’t spend any time investigating, instead she scrapes her fingers down his chest, digs them in until she draws blood, bites her own set of teeth marks into his collarbone and his shoulder and his neck, all while shifting and rocking against his cock so he can feel how wet she is from all the work his hands and mouth did. He inhales sharply and grips her hips in brutal hands, shifting and angling so that he can slam her down on his hard cock with an almost punishing fervour.

They crash together like they’re trying to strike sparks, or maybe just break each other apart. She’s hot for it, hot for him, hot and wet and needy, craving more even though she’s already shattered so violently, and greedy to feel him come to pieces within her as well. She’s half crazed as she surges against him, as he pulls at her with rough hands to make her fuck him faster, fuck him harder, as she bites and claws at his back and squirms against him. She clenches against him deliberately as she bites hard at his neck again and she feels his body stiffen against her, begin to jerk and shudder, and she digs her fingernails in and slams against him harder, forcing him to come more fiercely, more completely, feeling him empty himself inside her as he lets out a groan that seems torn from his soul and his eyes all but roll up in his head, hands unconsciously bruising her hips as they tighten with the force of his pleasure. As he begins to slow inside her she moves one hand to her clit and it only takes a moment of hard, rubbing pressure for her sore body to break apart again around him, this time with a low whine as the orgasm feels like it’s ripped out of her. His body gives a couple of final jerks in response, and then they both still, breathing hard, skin stinging from a dozen tiny wounds, mouths numb from the force of their kisses, bodies patterned with new emerging bruises, scratches, scrapes and teeth marks.

Milady shifts to roll to her back and lay her head on his chest, not able to do much more than stare at the ceiling blankly. It takes a long time for her breathing to slow, her heart to stop racing.

It’s strange, how you can fuck emotions away, slam them into someone else’s body and then end up left hollow. Her body feels well used – she could say used, bruised, all but abused, if she wants to return to making up obscene poetry – but for some reason, _she_ doesn’t feel used, even though she probably should after all that near-violence. It takes her a minute to identify why – to understand, suddenly but certainly, that while the passion and quite a bit of the roughness had been for her, the edge of raw hatred to it hadn’t been. Out of the two people writhing around on the bed, Athos had only really wanted to hurt one of them, and it hadn’t been her. Which makes an interesting change.

“Tell me,” she says out loud, and has to clear her throat to continue, her voice is so rough. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I told you,” he says, sounding exhausted to his very soul. “You and your fucking plan.”

“No. What’s really wrong? What made you so fucking angry with yourself you wanted to take it out on me? Not that I didn’t enjoy it immensely, but still.” She thinks now that he was trying to incite her to rage with his comments and actions, wanting her to claw at him and hurt him, although she has no idea if that desire was subconscious or entirely deliberate. Interestingly dark – but then, Athos has always had a very dark side to him, one that she thinks no one but her has every really seen or really recognised.

If her head wasn’t against his chest, she wouldn’t hear the sharp little intake of air, the jagged, pained way he pulls it into his lungs. He shifts, and after a moment pulls her even closer, settling her more fully against him, deciding to answer honestly. “I should have just let you burn them,” he whispers into her ear like a secret, and his voice is broken. “Those stupid papers.”

“What, so you wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore?”

“Organised Crime gave me their files on Sarazin today,” Athos’s voice sounds wretched. “They don’t even know his name but the list of things he’s done was… comprehensive. This man’s a serial murderer, a violent thug, an abusive pimp, a complete fucking predator, and he strangled – sorry, _garrotted_ – you. And if he does that again, it’ll be on me.”

She feels a surge of warmth at his protectiveness, however misguided, and wishes she didn’t. She just isn’t used to people feeling that way about her without her deliberately manipulating them into it – she’s the last person in the world to need someone else’s protection. She can take care of herself. Still, it’s nice, somehow, to think she has someone who gives a shit if she lives or dies.

She sighs anyway, closes her eyes. “Not everything is about you, Athos.” It’s just that he has a guilt complex, which interacts badly with his apparently compulsive need to continually guilt her as well. Fucking Catholics. “Besides, I thought it would be all be my fault for my greed. Wasn’t that would you said? Among other things. I’m not even going to _address_ that last comment.”

“I… probably shouldn’t have said that,” he admits.

“No, really?”

“It’s been a… hard week.” He pauses. “And I was – I know I have no right to be angry. But it doesn’t help when you do things like you did earlier. With that man in the bar, or even that reference to – to you and d’Artagnan. You just – it’s like you wind me up like a fucking toy, just to see how long before the spring breaks.”

“We’ve been divorced five years,” she points out, rather hypocritically, she knows. “I’m allowed to sleep with whoever I want.”

He lies there for a long moment, then says in a low voice, “Did you sleep with d’Artagnan because you knew he was my friend? My co-worker?”

“What? No.” She frowns at the ceiling. “Why would you think that? I did it to – um, _allegedly_ – bug his phone. You know that.” She wonders if he’s thinking of Remi and experiences the pang of guilt and confusion and anger that always accompanies thoughts of him.

“You could’ve bugged his phone in some other way,” Athos says flatly. “You didn’t have to fuck him for it. So why do it? Just to hurt me?”

“Again, not everything I do is about you, Athos,” Milady says with a roll of her eyes, even though she knows he can’t see it. “Sex was the easiest way, and he wasn’t physically repellent, so I figured why not. I honestly didn’t think you and your team would ever make the connection between that night and the bugged phone, let alone figure out that it was me.”

Despite all her taunts, she did quite enjoy sleeping with d’Artagnan, although it was certainly nothing like the crazed, wildly uncontrollable ecstasy of screwing Athos – for one thing, there wasn’t that emotional connection (however twisted), and for another, her attraction to d’Artagnan was always more of a mild awareness that he was quite pretty than anything stronger. Still, she mostly takes charge of her own pleasure in bed these days, and d’Artagnan didn’t hamper her in that pursuit at all, which puts him ahead of quite a few of her temporary hook-ups.

“Why not,” he echoes, with a harsh chuckle the she can feel vibrate through his chest. “Now there’s the romantic statement of the century.”

“Oh, don’t,” she says, moving her head off his chest and propping herself up on one elbow to glare at him. “Don’t try and guilt me for not sharing your strict, old-fashioned moral code. You think sex is somehow meaningful – apparently not so meaningful that you object to having the occasional hate fuck in a crappy hotel room, but meaningful. Fine, I understand that, I do, think what you like. But you need to try and understand that not everyone views it that way. You want to judge me for bugging his phone, sure, that was underhanded, you can tut tut about that all you want. But there’s nothing immoral about me sleeping with someone just because you wish I hadn’t. There’s no rule that says I have to be madly in love with every person I’m with.”

“Have you ever loved _any_ person you’ve been with?” he asks, turning his head away from her like the sight of her physically sickens him.

“I loved you. But right now, I’m having trouble remembering why,” she bites out. 

“I don’t think you ever loved me at all. People in love don’t do what you did.”

There’s an easy response to that, but she resists the urge to make it. Instead she says, “Well you’re wrong. I did love you.” 

“You loved my money,” he says, one side of his lips curling up in an ironic smile. “Or do you want to claim I’m wrong about that as well?”

“This again? I’m getting pretty fucking sick of you calling me a greedy bitch over and over again, Athos,” she warns. “It doesn’t piss me off quite as much as the incessant slut shaming, but it’s still not great. There’s nothing wrong with liking nice things.”

“So you’re saying you _didn’t_ love my money?” he asks, making his disbelief obvious, apparently thinking she’s avoided the real question here.

“Of course I loved your fucking money,” Milady says, completely exasperated. “And yes, it was a motivating factor at first, I’ll admit that. You took me out to restaurants that didn’t have plastic booths, you drove me around in your fucking Ferrari like I was an It Girl or something, you didn’t expect me to repay every dollar spent on me with sexual favours, and you never, ever made me feel cheap just for being poor. It was like having so much money meant it didn’t even register to you as an issue that I had none. But I did have none. How can you expect money _not_ to matter to me?”

He opens his mouth, but before he can comment, she steamrollers on.

“Do you know how old I was before I owned clothes that weren’t undersized, thin, dirty, cheap, full of holes, or even infested with fleas?” she demands. “People think you can’t be really poor in first world countries. People are wrong. We were dirt poor. _I_ was dirt poor. And then I was on the run and do you know how expensive that is? I spent more than two decades living on a knife edge, either destitute or one step from it at all times, and then I moved in with you and you told me to spend whatever I liked. I could finally relax, stop wondering where the next meal was coming from, stop hoarding every cent I had just to survive, stop panicking about every visit to the doctor or unexpectedly high electricity bill. I owned _jewellery_ , for God’s sake. Of course I loved it. I loved you more, though, and I would have loved you every bit as much if you were as penniless as me. Enjoying spending the money you gave me didn’t make me a bad person.”

“Oh,” he says, a bit faintly.

“ _Oh_ is right,” she says crisply, thinking to herself that their pillow talk has definitely gotten less enjoyable than it used to be. On the bright side, the sex is still explosive. “What did you think, that I married you just for your money?” He’s made some comments to that effect in the past, a few tonight, even, but she assumed he was just aiming low blows at her. She didn’t think he actually believed it. She’d been so obviously, ridiculously, painfully in love with him back then. 

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“I can never decide if you’re the most insecure person I know or the most arrogant,” she says. “Maybe both. It’s a confusing combination.” They have to stop this conversation, because it’s giving her the oddest feeling of something squeezing her heart. Had he really thought she was after his _money_? For fuck’s sake. “Now you can shut up and leave, or shut up and stay, but either way please just _shut up_. I want to get some sleep.”

For ten full minutes she lies there, tenser than she wants to be, waiting for him to leave. Finally, he gets up and she tries not to regret practically ordering him away instead of spinning out the conversation longer. But all he does is go over to the light, flick it off, and then come back to the crappy hotel bed and curl his semi-naked body around hers once more. They still fit like puzzle pieces. Her whole body relaxes into his, a bone-deep response to his closeness that she can’t suppress.

She forces her breathing to steady and deepen like she’s fast asleep. After a minute he lets out a long sigh and presses an open-mouthed kiss to her hair, pulling her even closer, his body relaxing as well. The battle’s over, and now they’ve reached some kind of truce, although what the terms of it are is anyone’s guess.

She sleeps better than she has in five years.


	8. A Civilised Discussion

Athos floats in a place between sleep and consciousness, his wife in his arms, warm and soft. Her silky hair brushes against his face, her slender limbs are intertwined with his, and he can feel the steady soft inhale and exhale of her breath against his chest. It’s a softer, sweeter dream than most of his ones about her, but no less pleasant, and he inhales the scent of her and nuzzles in closer, savouring it.

She lets out a sleepy moan and moves positions in her sleep slightly, one foot sliding smoothly against his calf as she hooks herself around him so she’s half-lying on him. He presses his lips to her neck in an open-mouthed kiss in response, settling himself more fully against her, desire starting to replace dreams. It’s so nice just to laze here, enjoying the feel of her body against his, no urgency to get up and deal with the world, but he’s starting to feel a different sort of urgency. He thinks lazily that he should wake her up properly before it’s time for his shift – when is his shift? He can’t quite remember what hours he’s working this week, perhaps after this he should text Remi and ask, but right now he’s much too absorbed in –

His mouth finds a spot on her shoulder that makes her jerk against him with a hiss of pain, waking them both up with a jolt. He blinks his eyes open and realises the place he kissed has a vicious looking bite mark on it, and it takes several moments to realise they’re not at home in their house at Pinon, and she’s not his wife anymore, and that he’s the one who left that bite mark.

He ungracefully shoves himself back a foot from her, nearly falling off the bed in his haste, suddenly fully awake and abruptly horrified.

Anne rolls to her side and studies him through half-closed eyes. They shoved the sheets down at some point in the night, probably in response to the summer heat or maybe just because of how sweaty they were at the time, so he can see her body in its full glory. It provokes a wave of lust and guilt simultaneously – she looks beautiful, of course she does, but she also looks like she fell down a flight of fucking stairs or something. Okay, maybe not a flight of stairs, but still, there’s some quite visible damage there. He can make out at least five bruises, three deep sets of bite marks, a dozen hickeys, fingerprint marks on her hips –

“We’re adults,” she says, rolling her eyes at his visible horror. “I get that you’re filled with regret right now -”

“And you’re _not_?”

“It was just sex.”

“That was _not_ just sex,” he says, and manages to gesture at her. “I – fuck.”

“You fuck?” she looks amused. “No, please, tell me more.”

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I -”

Now, her expression turns to one of realisation. “Oh, you’re talking about the bruises, not the sex. That’s what you regret? What you’re sorry for?” she checks.

“Of course I am,” he says.

“Look at yourself,” she points out, and now that he looks down, he can see his skin is just as bruised and broken, a patchwork of bright colours across his pale skin. He can feel it when he moves. The sensation isn’t wholly unpleasant. “It was hardly one-sided.”

“It was unforgiveable,” Athos says miserably. “Of me, I mean. I hurt you.”

“Consensually,” she says.

“Was it really? It’s not like I stopped and asked,” he says darkly. The truth is that even if it was consensual, the roughness and violence of last night still floods him with horrified guilt. After everything he’s done, he has no right to lay rough hands on her, whatever she says. He _certainly_ has no business doing it for his own pleasure, even if she enjoyed it as well, and it’s disgusting that he wanted to hurt her like that and have her hurt him like that.

“Athos, I went for it just as hard.” She sounds very reasonable, and he hates it. “I think it was fair to take me shoving my tongue down your throat as a ‘yes, please’. Besides, I’m the one who slapped you first, remember? If we’re talking about -”

“Because I was all but pinning you to the wall,” he argues. “I had no right.”

“I decide what rights you have when it comes to me,” she says, rolling her eyes again at his stubbornness. “I enjoyed last night. I think I was pretty vocal about enjoying it, in fact. And it’s not like I don’t remember our old safe words. If I used one, you would’ve stopped.”

“Are you sure?” he asks bleakly.

She reaches out and strokes his hair away from his forehead, then rests her palm on his cheek, wriggling closer to him on the bed so their faces are only inches apart. “Yes. I am. Credit me with some sense, please.”

“How can you stand to be here?” he asks, and he can hear the brokenness in his own voice. “Forget slapping me, you should’ve shot me.”

“Didn’t have a gun.” Her lips quirk at the mild joke, and she rubs her thumb slowly back on forth against his cheek, like she’s trying to soothe him.

“I mean it. After what I’ve done in the past…”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not fine. And you know it’s not.” The reasons for his anger are irrelevant: what he did back then was inexcusable, horrific. He has no idea how she can bear him being in the same room as her, let alone in the same bed, let alone doing the kind of things they did last night.

“Maybe we should stick to discussing the present,” she says, and her tone is soft.

“Still. Last night, I crossed a line,” he says. Despite his guilt, he presses his face into her hand and closes his eyes, savouring her touch. 

“I think I’m more qualified than you to decide that,” she says dryly. “Since it’s me we’re talking about, after all.”

The words trigger a memory, her in the car on the way back from the precinct that second night, saying she was more qualified than him to judge whether her profession was sex work or not. He understands how literally she meant that she was _qualified_ , now, and feels sickened by himself all over again. “I shouldn’t have treated you that way,” he says, “Especially after what you told me the other day, to treat you like that, to act like -”

He opens his eyes just in time to see her own flash with fury, and she moves her hand to thread through the back of his hair and forces him to look at her. He can’t stop his eyes from darting down to glance at her lips as she moves even closer to him.

“Don’t you fucking _dare_ start treating me like some kind of porcelain doll because I told you about things that happened over a decade ago,” she says in a hiss. “Do you like it when you tell people you’re rich and they start treating you differently, or when you tell them you’re a cop, or even when you tell them about me? Don’t walk on eggshells. At this point, doing that isn’t just hypocritical, it’s insulting.”

“You’ve told me a lot of things you don’t want me to treat you as lately,” he remarks, taken aback. “So how _do_ you want me to treat you?”

It sounds like a joke, but it’s an honest question. What does she want from him? What is she looking for? Surely it can’t be just sex, not after everything they’ve been through, not after everything they’ve done. If she wanted casual sex, she could find a dozen men in any bar eager to help her out. He remembers her talking about wanting closure. Is that what this is?

“Just treat me like a fucking person,” she says with a sigh, releasing him – or at least, releasing his hair. He feels like he’s still as trapped as ever. 

“A fucking person,” he echoes, trying to make sense of this. Almost without meaning to, he edges closer to her, and her breathing picks up slightly. Their noses are very nearly brushing now.

“Mmm,” she hums, and moves closer as well, so he can feel the heat of her body against every inch of his. After all the arguing, it shouldn’t be so easy to get back to this point, and yet, somehow, it is. Just being close to her is enough. “Or even, right now, like a person you’re fucking.”

He kisses her. It’s a gentle, chaste kiss for a few moments, but turns hotter as soon as she opens her mouth against his. They move against each other lazily, enjoying the slow burn of lust, the gradual build up, heat spreading across their bodies in sweeping prickles of desire. Athos is content to press against her, to explore her mouth slowly, to enjoy her taste and savour the sweet little noises she makes against him, as if his gentleness can make up for the utter lack of it the night before. He strokes her back gently, pressing her closer against him, then moving down to caress the impossibly silky skin of her ass, the curves that somehow manage to be soft and round and firm all at the same time. Before yesterday he’d forgotten how unbelievably perfect her body was, how every inch of her tasted and smelt and felt divine – oh, he’d remembered she was beautiful, but his memory hadn’t done her justice.

His memory also hadn’t done justice to the way her touch leaves fire in its wake, however light the touch in question is. His arousal is starting to become difficult to ignore. She lets her hands lazily map out his chest, his back, his own ass, his shoulders, and has just started to trail her fingers teasingly up one thigh towards her end goal when his phone starts ringing.

“Let it go to voicemail,” she suggests, voice husky, and lets the back of her knuckles brush lightly across the head of his cock so his hips stutter forward against his will.

“I don’t even think I have voicemail set up,” he says, wanting nothing so much as to ignore it completely and continue this slow, gentle exploration of each other’s bodies. Failing that, he’d like to roll them both over and quicken the pace, reply to whoever’s calling later.

But it could be news on Sarazin. The others could have found him. She might not need to be in danger.

He rolls out of the bed regretfully and Milady flops onto her back with a frustrated sigh.

“Detective de la Fere speaking,” he says, eyes still fixed on his ex-wife’s naked body. She notices his focus and gives him a lazy smile, bringing her own hands to the breasts he’d been happily focusing his attentions on before and starting to toy with them herself. He bites back a moan as she pinches lightly at her nipples, letting her eyes slide closed in pleasure. 

Then he straightens, managing to tear himself away from the glorious sight in front of him, now fully absorbed by what Aramis is saying. “Say that again.”

Milady stops touching herself, alerted by his tone. By the time he’s hung up, she’s already starting to pull a dress on. He stops her with a touch of his hand to her shoulder. “You can stay here. In fact, you should _definitely_ stay here. I’ll leave you money for a taxi and later you can -” he pauses. No, maybe not. “I’ll text you the name of a bar. We’ll all meet you there later to keep working on this. You can’t go to the precinct.”

“Why not?”

“Because Rochefort is there.”

X_X_X_X

“I don’t think you entirely realise the position you’re in, Captain Treville,” Rochefort says, leaning across the table slightly and staring at him unblinkingly. “I could end your career with one phone call.”

“Consider me very impressed,” Treville says dryly. “The only thing I can do with one phone call is call a taxi to take you home. I don’t know how many times you expect me to repeat this – no one here has stolen from you.”

Aramis tries to look as innocent as possible, pasting a bright smile on his face. “Honestly, all I was doing was attending a party.”

“Pretending to be the plus one of a woman who wasn’t even there,” Rochefort points out, basilisk gaze switching to examine Aramis.

“Crashing a party, then. Is that illegal?”

“I don’t know, Detective,” Rochefort says. “Really, that feels like the sort of thing _you_ should know… if you weren’t so incompetent. What sort of idiot goes to a party to steal something and introduces himself by name to every woman there?”

From the corner of his eyes, Aramis can see Treville barely stop himself from facepalming. Alright, yes, that had probably been a mistake. Except that Ana had already introduced him to several people at the door, and if he’d switched names, that would have seemed even more suspicious.

“I wasn’t crashing, as it happens,” he says, seizing on this inarguable fact. “Ana de Bourbon is a friend of mine.”

“A friend… of yours.” Rochefort looks him up and down doubtfully.

“I interviewed her for a previous investigation,” Aramis brightens his smile even further, to toothpaste advertisement levels. “We seemed to hit it off. Anyway, she added my name to your little get-together.”

“Now why would she do that?” Rochefort says softly. There’s danger in his voice, a sharp sort of interest. Until now, he’s been lazy, almost amused. Suddenly, he isn’t.

“I asked her to,” Aramis says. It would probably be better for his situation to claim it had been Ana’s idea, but he doesn’t want to her to lose one of her only clients – she really does love organising these things. It makes no sense to him, since he’d rather stab himself with a rusty fork than plan any party beside a stag night, but it’s important to her. He grasps for an excuse, and finds the perfect one. “I heard Adele was going to be there. I wanted to give her my… condolences.”

“Condolences,” he says flatly.

“She was very attached to Armand Richelieu,” Aramis says earnestly. “His death must have been devastating. I thought she could use some emotional support. Especially since I think they’re supposed to be announcing how he settled his estate next month – I have no idea why the lawyers took so long to figure it out, but this time must have been _agonising_ for her. So much uncertainty, to go along with the sorrow.”

He twirls his moustache and twinkles his eyes roguishly at Rochefort, trying to look as much like a gigolo as he possibly can. He should have worn tighter pants today… now _there’s_ a thought he doesn’t often have.

“So, you see, attending your little party nothing to do with Aramis’s job,” Treville says flatly. 

Rochefort’s lips thin. “And what about your other detectives? Three of whom were at the party.”

“I needed emotional support too?” Aramis tries.

“One of them was seen dancing with the notorious Milady de Winter,” Rochefort enunciates her name like it’s a title instead. “Now there’s an odd combination.”

“Not really,” Aramis says, unable to stop himself from saying this. “They used to be married, after all.”

“They used to be… I’m sorry, what?” For the first time, Rochefort looks genuinely surprised.

“Athos and Milady,” Aramis spells out helpfully. “It didn’t work out, but it was just one of those things, no one to blame. They’re still quite close.” He waits for God to strike him down with a bolt of lightning for the sheer enormity of that lie, but the building must have a lightning rod or something. “Think they quite enjoyed getting the chance to catch up.”

“And you claim they were all on the guest list as well?” Rochefort says. “Even Milady de Winter? A little birdie told me the police were looking for her. Something about unsolved home invasions. In fact, that same little birdie indicated you might even have found her.”

Treville intervenes. “I suggest you take up these questions with your staff,” he says sternly. “My people can’t be expected to know who is and isn’t invited to one of your parties. However, if you believe something was stolen from your house during the party, we’ll be happy to investigate it for you. All you need to do is fill out a report stating what’s missing.”

“And Milady de Winter?”

“We don’t discuss ongoing investigations with members of the public unless they’re involved,” Treville says. “ _Are_ you involved?”

“Heh.” Rochefort huffs out a dry little laugh which is just as creepy as his stare. “I’m a potential victim – after all, if your _gallant_ men didn’t rob me, I’d say there’s a fair chance she was the culprit, wouldn’t you?”

“Again, we need a report on what’s missing before we can investigate the crime,” Treville says. He glances behind Aramis, communicating silently with someone, and Aramis realises Athos must have arrived at some point. He’s texted Porthos and d’Artagnan as well, but Athos was the only one answering his phone at this hour, which is surprising – Athos isn’t normally a morning person.

“I’ll make sure to fill one out, then,” Rochefort says, and stands. “You were exactly as unhelpful as policemen always are, Captain. Still, I’m glad we had this little talk. It’s important to know where you stand.”

They all watch him go in silence, and then Aramis shoots a questioning look at Athos. “Here?”

“Follow me,” Athos murmurs, and they all troop down to a café two streets away.

“Well, that could’ve gone worse,” Aramis says, taking a slug of coffee and wincing as it burns his mouth. “He’s got nothing.”

“He didn’t come over just to make us uncomfortable,” Treville says. “He told us too much for that. He all but said he’s paying off someone at the precinct for information.”

“Which is very useful to know,” Athos points out. “Why give so many little hints and threats? It was stupid to tell us he knew anything. He could’ve just waited and caught us out when he had more. Was he trying to intimidate us? Why?”

“I think he just likes being smug,” Aramis states.

The Captain sighs. “I suspect he had motives beyond that for his visit. Besides anything else, I’d suggest checking for bugs again. And we should try and avoid asking Ana de Bourbon for any more favours if possible. I saw his face when you mentioned her. There’s something strange going on there.” He drains his coffee and stands. “I have a meeting now, unfortunately. You’ll have to continue without me. You all have permission to work from home for the next week – or from coffee shops, or hotel rooms, or bars, or wherever else you can find with wifi and no other cops.”

Aramis looks back at Athos as the Captain leaves. “You’re right. It was _very_ stupid telling us what he knew and implying how he knew it. He doesn’t have anywhere near enough for an official complaint.”

“He was trying to shake us, see what we’d do, perhaps,” Athos says. “He doesn’t need to make an official complaint. We already know that when he doesn’t like people, they disappear. It could be he wanted to show us we were on thin ice with him. Or maybe he wanted to cripple our investigation further by making informational exchange with other areas impossible.”

“I don’t think we’re being followed, but that’s a possibility as well, since he knows we’re working with Milady and he probably wants to find her,” Aramis says, thinking out loud. “We should check on her, make sure she got back to her hotel all right last night.” 

Athos shrugs, looks away. “I saw her this morning before I came to the precinct, warned her. She’s fine. When did Porthos and d’Artagnan say they’d be here?”

It’s the look away which does it. Aramis had already noticed Athos had a cut on his lip, but hadn’t really thought twice about it. But when Athos turns his head to the side the thin scarf he’s wearing bunches and Aramis can see – holy crap, are those _toothmarks_?

Before he can stop himself, Aramis reaches out and tugs the scarf down with a finger. Athos tries to swat his hand away, but it’s already crystal clear. Not just one set of bitemarks, several, and inflicted hard enough that there’s visible scabbing and bruises. “Saw her this morning, did you?” Aramis drawls.

Athos doesn’t reply, simply fixes the scarf so the evidence is hidden again, but Aramis can see the flush creeping across his face. He doesn’t meet Aramis’s eyes.

“Athos, what are you _doing_?” Aramis asks bluntly. “The time in the wardrobe – all right, close quarters, honest mistake, hard to resist. But that lip looks sore and I’m guessing there’s some more bruises and cuts I can’t see. You understand the difference between a healthy relationship and a destructive one, right?”

“Yes, I believe it’s called ‘marriage’,” Athos says dryly, but he sighs when he sees Aramis’s expression. “I’ve already had this conversation once this morning, Aramis. You don’t need to worry. I’m fine.”

“Really. You don’t _seem_ fine lately. In fact, you seem like a bloody mess – and in fact, ‘bloody’ appears to be a fairly good descriptor in this case.”

“What’s bloody?” Porthos says, grabbing Treville’s abandoned seat. He must have given d’Artagnan a lift, since the lad drags over a chair from another table at the same time.

“Athos’s lip,” Aramis says.

D’Artagnan raises his eyebrows. “What happened there?”

“I got slapped,” Athos says, deadpan. “Extremely hard.”

“Surprised it took so long,” Porthos notes, though Aramis can see concern in his eyes. He doesn’t bother to ask who slapped him.

“Surprised you let it happen,” d’Artagnan says, shaking his head. “I would’ve arrested her for assaulting a policeman, whatever Treville says.” 

Athos shrugs, looking slightly defensive, although Aramis can’t tell if he’s being defensive of his own actions or Milady’s. “I wasn’t exactly blameless. It’s fine.”

There’s that word again, _fine_. What a load of crap. He hasn’t been _fine_ in weeks – actually, it’s starting to seem like he hasn’t been fine the whole time they’ve known him, he was just papering over the cracks. There’s something fascinating about a relationship so intense that five years apart can’t even dull the edges of it, but the more he sees of it, the less Aramis ever wants to experience it.

“So, Rochefort finally noticed he was missing those files,” Porthos says. He’s always had a keen instinct for when a subject is better left alone. It’s unlikely he’ll abandon his questions forever, Aramis knows, but he’ll pick his time, maybe wait for Athos to have had a few drinks, maybe find out what Aramis knows first. Who knows, if he talks to Athos maybe he’ll have better luck than Aramis at getting somewhere.

“I think he probably noticed immediately,” Athos says, grabbing onto the new subject with visible relief. “He must have assumed it was Anne at first. Then when he heard we were looking for her as well, that we had evidence against her, he must have connected the dots and followed them right to us.”

“What do we do?” d’Artagnan asks. “Porthos said we were planning to use Milady as bait to draw out this Sarazin, get evidence against Rochefort through him. If he warns Sarazin -”

“He has no way of knowing we’ve connected Sarazin to him,” Athos says firmly. “And even if he did, that just means he’d be even less likely to risk contacting the man. He won’t know if we have his phones or office bugged in some way, or if we’ve already tracked Sarazin down and are waiting for them to meet up or call each other. He won’t be taking risks right now. He didn’t take any with the Sale case, remember? Unless you count abducting her at all, which was something of an overreaction.”

“We’re continuing with the plan, then,” Aramis says cautiously, eyes on Athos’s face. “Hanging Milady de Winter out as a target in the hopes her old boss will take a shot.”

The twitch of discomfort is barely noticeable and immediately stilled, but there. “Yes,” Athos says, expressionless. “We’re still continuing with that plan.”

X_X_X_X

“So what exactly did Treville say about this plan?” Milady looks entertained by her own thoughts. “Ooh, let me guess: It’s his ass on the line, so he can’t take a cock-up?”

Milady’s wearing a tight dress, but unlike her usual attire, it’s long-sleeved and high-necked and not at all sheer. It’s still very short, but not quite as short as most of the things she wears, and Athos remembers with a flush that he left a few hickeys on her thighs as well. Aramis gave her a look up and down when she entered and then raised his eyebrows at Athos, so clearly he’s figured out the reason behind Athos’s ex-wife’s new interest in modesty as well, but no one else has commented, thankfully.

“I can’t tell if you’ve watched too many cop shows, or too much porn,” Porthos says frankly.

“Yes,” she says immediately, startling a laugh out of him. In another life, Athos might’ve laughed too, but how can _anything_ be funny right now?

“Please stop it with the dirty jokes,” d’Artagnan requests wearily. “They stopped being funny a while ago.”

“Not to me!” she says. “And just think, there’s a whole wide world of ‘getting off’ jokes I have yet to plumb the depths of.”

“ _Please_ ,” Athos says. Fucking hell, they’re coming up with a plan that might end in her death. It’s hardly the right time for bad puns. “Could you take this seriously? Or even just pretend to, for my sake.”

She opens her mouth, but then frowns, closes it, and gives one sharp nod. He blinks at her in something close to amazement as she falls silent and sits up straight, to all appearances as professional and business-like as Treville would be in this situation.

“So what’s the plan?” d’Artagnan asks, saving Athos from having to say it.

“He’ll already have my current name from his friends in the police force, and he’ll probably have gone through his usual people to try and find me – with no luck, clearly. I have a contact who can pass on the rest. Gallagher. I’m going to tell him to flip on me... or rather, to let one of his men flip on me.” Milady shifts forward in her chair, all business now. “They’re mostly very loyal, but there’s one or two he handles with care. Gallagher lets my location slip, and also lets slip that someone’s willing to pay for it. The man will call up his own contacts and say that he knows exactly where I am.”

“That won’t seem suspicious to Sarazin?”

“Oh, it won’t go to him immediately. Someone in Sarazin’s crew who knows what he’s willing to pay for me will hear first, some street thug with no brains. They’ll buy the info on the assumption that if Gallagher’s man’s bullshitting them they can beat the money back out of him, and if he’s telling the truth they can rise a few levels in Sarazin’s organisation.” She waves a dismissive hand. “Sarazin’s men are idiots.”

“Didn’t you work for him?” d’Artagnan mutters under his breath.

Milady ignores him for once. “So that’s three people’s worth of Chinese Whispers, sure, but at that point the information won’t seem too convenient – it’ll seem like a real leak, not a manufactured one. And even if they do trace it back, everyone knows Gallagher’s good at helping people flee, and I’m supposed to be running from the cops right now. Makes sense he’d know where I am. Honest mistake sharing it with the wrong person – well, as honest as any of us are.”

“We could just try tracing all their calls,” Aramis points out.

“Good luck tracing Gallagher’s calls.” Milady snorts derisively. “If he lets us, though, we could try to track the trail his underling leaves. I don’t think we’re likely to manage it before I get abducted, but it’s a possibility.”

Athos likes that possibility. Find Sarazin without putting his ex-wife at risk, send Anne to go wait out the rest of the case in a nice hotel room, accept her grudging gratitude when she gets her deal and doesn’t spend a single day in jail. And then she’ll leave, won’t she? Probably? He can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not. She makes him so _angry_. She makes him so confused.

He doesn’t want her to leave.

“Anyway, I’ll be staying at a bad hotel in the slums,” she continues. “Believable as a hiding spot, but very easy to snatch someone from. They’ll probably strip me just in case of trackers or listening devices, maybe hose me down as well to short out any they miss, but I’m _very_ good at hiding things on myself and I have waterproof versions of both. They drug me, take me to him, and you lot follow.”

“We should call on the local cops once we know the area,” Athos says, thinking. “Since we don’t know how many people we’ll need to take out Sarazin’s men and arrest them all. We can’t have them all outside whatever the location is, but we can at least have them within a few streets and ready to go on our signal.” 

“Cops on his payroll,” d’Artagnan reminds him.

Athos sighs. “Right. Anne, try and let us know how many people are in the building somehow. We’ll listen out for the first number you say, no matter what context it’s in. If there’s too many for us to handle, we’ll call the locals in at the absolute last minute. Otherwise, we’ll go in on our own. All of us should be right outside the whole time though in case things go bad.”

“Yes, you should. Well, a couple of you, anyway, too many will be too obvious. I’m going to say Porthos and Aramis.”

“What?!” Athos says at the exact same moment d’Artagnan does.

She answers Athos first. “Athos, you stand like a policeman, you walk like a policeman. You talk like someone who was brought up by a nanny and had three tutors. And the way you stare at people… If I was a drug dealer and I so much as saw you nearby, I’d be sounding the alarm before you had time to open the car door. You sitting outside would probably get me killed.”

“And what about me?” d’Artagnan demands. “I don’t -”

“Sarazin’s men are dangerous,” she says, a little dismissively, flicking her gaze from Athos to him. “I’d like cops with more experience backing me up, if it’s all the same to you.”

It sounds like it should be one of her innuendo-laden taunts with the word ‘experience’, another way to remind Athos that she’s slept with his friend as well as him, but for once there was nothing in her voice like that. He sees her glance his way, and the absurd idea crosses his mind that she’s trying to cut down on that since he mentioned it bothers him, just like she’s trying to stay serious because of his request. It’s self-absorbed to think that it might all be for his benefit, but nevertheless, the thought warms him slightly, makes him flush.

“I can handle myself,” d’Artagnan protests too loudly, making Milady flinch and the bartender look over at them in interest.

“And often do, I’m sure,” Milady says dryly, and yes, there’s the innuendo, but this time it’s not intended to piss off Athos, and then he sees her flash a glance at him again and frown with something like regret. She’s really trying. She modifies her tone again, turns serious, explains herself. “Porthos and Aramis are the best choices. Porthos can pass for someone from that kind of neighbourhood, since really, he is. And out of the rest of you, I think Aramis is the one least likely to make people immediately realise you’re all cops. He’s gone undercover before, hasn’t he?”

D’Artagnan stares at her for a long moment, and then rubs his hand against his face in annoyance and give in. “Fine. This is your plan, after all.”

“No, it’s not fine,” Athos says sharply. “I’m being as close to this as I can, even if I have to be in the boot of the fucking car for it, do you understand?” He pauses, backtracks slightly, not wanting to be so open about how worried he is. All of them are already staring at him. “D’Artagnan should come too. However well-hidden we have to be. We can’t send only half of us in to an unknown situation.”

Milady looks at him for a long moment, then finally nods, resigned to it. “Well, just make sure you wait for my signal, then. I want to try and squeeze _something_ out of him before you all come bursting in.” She reaches up and touches her fingertips to her high collar before blinking and letting her hand drop.

It occurs to him for the first time that her need to turn everything into a bad joke or a mock seduction might actually just be her own nerves coming out. She’s spent a decade running from this man and from what he represents, so putting herself in his hands once more must be terrifying – maybe he should try and remember that, instead of selfishly focusing on his own fear, instead of letting that fear turn to anger again.

He’s actually not as angry as he thought he was. His anger has been fading slightly since she sat in that interrogation room and calmly laid out the facts of her life, the rage going gradually (and not without the occasional setback) from ‘imminent explosion’ to ‘low level seething’. The past few days have been him processing that, fighting to hold onto that absolute and barely-controlled rage because he doesn’t want to let fear take its place – fear of what could happen to her, but also fear of what that will do to him. What she could do to him again. He’s still somewhat angry, of course. Thomas, Remi, Richelieu – he has the right to be angry about her choices, to resent her for them, just as she has the right to hate him forever for what he’s done to her. But anger’s no longer his controlling emotion regarding her. It can’t be, not right now.

If he told her that knowing her past made him less angry, she’d probably think he feels sorry for her. And he does feel sorry for the girl who eventually became his wife and what she went through, of course he does, but that has nothing to do with why his anger’s been slowly leaching out of him. Instead, it’s that she told him about who she was. She shared herself. She was finally honest. And the truth wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be.

After catching her with Thomas, it hadn’t immediately crossed his mind to think she was only after his money. All he’d really thought was that she couldn’t love him, because who would do that to someone they’d loved? One bottle of scotch down, he’d wondered if she’d fallen out of love with him, if he’d done something wrong, if he’d failed her somehow and that’s why she’d slept with his brother. It hadn’t been until halfway through the second bottle that he decided she could never have loved him, not even in the beginning, because it didn’t seem reasonable she could love him so much one day and not at all the next. That had made more sense, and even better, it meant there was no way to blame himself for her betrayal, no need to wonder how he’d lost her if he’d never truly had her. Of course she’d never loved him.

It was Thomas’s words, shouted through his front door that night, that led him to realise it had to have been about money if it wasn’t about love. Why else would someone like Anne marry him? He’d assumed the fake name had to be part of that as well, adopted a month before she met him, when she conveniently went to work for his brother where she would be bound to run into him. But her confessions a few days ago – which, to his surprise, he believes implicitly – had put that belief to rest. Her name changes had nothing to do with him, they were just about avoiding her own past. She hadn’t worked for his brother in order to meet and entrap him, she’d simply been trying to find a safer line of employment than her previous one. That meant nothing about meeting him had been pre-planned or calculated, it had really been as coincidental as it seemed. 

Then last night, she’d said it hadn’t just been about grabbing an opportunity to get his money, however much she’d enjoyed it, and more of his anger and pain had started to fade. It means that almost every part of them meeting and falling in love had been every bit as genuine as he’d thought it was at the time, every bit as amazing and miraculous and _true_. It doesn’t excuse what she did with Thomas. Nothing ever will, not to him. In fact, if she still loved him at that point, it may even make it worse, since it means she was willing to cheat on him anyway. But it does mean something that she wasn’t just trying to exploit him or take his money. It means something that the lies she told weren’t malicious, that she was just desperately trying to protect the life they had. He just wishes he knew exactly _what_ it means.

Last night was… well, he doesn’t know what to think about that, isn’t sure he wants to think about it all. Maybe they both enjoyed it, but it still felt like crossing a line, one of his lines if not one of hers. He’s terrified of hurting her again the way he did five years ago. Any kind of violence seems too close to that, whatever she says. But this morning had been something else, getting to hold her like that again, watching the morning light play across her smooth skin as he touched her. Was that a mistake too? He can’t do it again, can’t let himself get close, not after the way loving her destroyed him last time, not after the way he destroyed her in turn. But when he thinks about telling her they can’t ever do it again, he feels almost sick at the thought. Just like he feels sick at the thought of her leaving again, and sick at the thought of her in danger. 

“Athos?” d’Artagnan says, and Athos refocuses.

He drags his gaze away from her. “We should try and be nearby for the actual abduction as well. Wait outside the hotel, at least.”

“If whoever shows up sees you -” she starts.

“It will still better than not taking _any_ precautions against them killing you,” he says firmly. “We should be close by to intervene just in case.”

“Well, so long as they hold a lengthy conversation directly in front of me about whether to kill me or not, you’ll be a lot of help,” she says with an eye roll. “So I’ll just keep my fingers crossed they’re complete amateurs, shall I?”

“You haven’t seen this Sarazin for a decade,” Aramis says. “How are you so sure he wants you alive, anyway?”

“Oh, I didn’t say he wanted me _alive_ ,” she says. “He’s not that much of an idiot. All I said is he wouldn’t want to get his people to kill me if they could grab me instead. He’ll still kill me eventually. But Sarazin likes to get up close and personal with his victims, see their fear, make them beg, that sort of thing. He likes monologuing about how they deserve it, too. In my case he’s probably been adding to the speech since the day I left. It could be hours in length by now.”

“You’ve seen him kill someone before?”

“Let’s save all these fun discussions for when I actually have to testify, how about that?” she asks dryly. “The important point is that Sarazin won’t kill me unexpectedly. You’ll have plenty of time to storm the place once he starts talking about how badly he’s missed me. With any luck I can get him waxing on nostalgic for a while as well, maybe pick up some information on Sofia and Francesco.”

“Try and bring up Rochefort, as well, if you get the chance,” Porthos suggests. “Could be Sarazin has some things to say we don’t know yet.”

“Hmm, yes. I could mention that I think we’ve got a mutual friend who doesn’t want me dead. If he thinks I’m just grasping desperately at straws, looking for reasons he shouldn’t kill me, he’d probably be happy to say a few things about Rochefort and their friendship.”

“What kind of criminal spills his guts that easily?” d’Artagnan asks incredulously.

“The kind who’s successfully evaded you and your co-workers for upwards of thirty years, now,” Milady points out. “So he likes to monologue, and to intimidate people, so what. It’s hardly a career-killer for… well, a career killer. Not that that’s his only marketable skill, but I’d say it’s the one that’s gotten him furthest. Keeping your mouth shut is useful, but building a reputation is _essential_ if you want to be the one in charge. He’s built one.”

“We won’t let him build it further,” Athos says, getting back to the important thing. “If you speak to Gallagher today and start this process, how long do you think it will take for his men to come for you?”

“Tonight, tomorrow night, or the night after,” she lists. “No later than that. Much longer in the same place would make them suspicious. But information travels quickly when it’s that profitable.”

He hates this plan. _Hates_ it. “I assume that from pretty much the moment you make the call, we’ll have to keep our distance.”

She frowns, then sighs, admitting, “Yes. Yes, that’s… yes. If anyone was watching me, meeting up with the police would rather blow the whole thing out of the water, wouldn’t it. I suppose you’ll be free of my interference for a few days, then.”

“A few days that we’ll spend sitting outside your hotel room,” d’Artagnan points out sourly. “So don’t worry, you’ll still be getting in the way of any other work, Milady.”

“As if you have any work that’s half as important as this,” she says dismissively.

Athos clears his throat. “May I have a word,” he says, aware that his tone turns the polite request into an order. “In private.” He stands and heads for the little passageway between the bar and dining room, assuming she’ll keep pace with him.

“Sure, why not, these little talks always go so well,” Milady says dryly behind his back as she follows him. The moment they’re alone, she turns on him, frowning. “Athos, we can’t keep going over this. I get to decide what -”

He interrupts her with a kiss, slotting his mouth over hers fervently, deepening it as she responds. He draws her close, fire racing up and down him at her touch, and savours the feeling of her heartbeat against his chest and those little noises she makes in the back of her throat as they kiss. After a while, he pulls back, leaving them both gasping and red-faced.

“A kiss for luck?” she asks, nonplussed. One corner of her lips twists up into a half-smile.

“If you get yourself killed, I’ll…”

“What, throw me a very nice funeral? Athos, I’ll be fine. I’m not suicidal. I’ll call it the second I think it’s too risky.” Her half-smile widens into a real one. “I have no intention of dying. Besides anything else, we have some… unfinished business… to take care of before I die.”

“We’ll always have unfinished business,” he says, because he’s at least self-aware enough to know _that_.

“Then I guess I’ll have to live forever, won’t I?”


	9. Bound and Determined

Milady de Winter is used to disliking people. After all, she dislikes nearly everyone, apart from the people she can’t even be bothered to think about enough to dislike. But she can honestly say that she’s only ever hated four.

One’s Athos, of course, and that’s – complicated. Different from the others. He’s in a category all his own, because it’s not just hatred, it has love twisted into it, heartbreak, fury, betrayal on both sides, passion, grief, regret, and all the best memories of her life. She can’t even say for sure there is hatred in the morass of confused emotions anymore. If it is there, it’s not the dominant emotion right now. He let her go. He apologised, even if it wasn’t with words. She still doesn’t know what she thinks about that, but she knows she doesn’t want payback any longer. That vicious little fantasy is done. She could play him and his friends again and run off into the night, of course she could, but what would be the point? She hadn’t felt any real satisfaction leaving him to be found in Rochefort’s place with an open safe and no excuses to offer, so she can’t imagine leaving Athos and his boss and friends to be officially reprimanded and possibly fired for losing a suspected criminal and valuable source of information will give her any more joy. 

Just as importantly, there’s a lot of selfish reasons not to run. She doesn’t have the kind of money she needs to start over again, the connections, the security of knowing Sarazin or Rochefort won’t come after her. If this fails, well, then she’ll reconsider. Living on the run is unpleasant, but then, so’s jail, from what she’s heard. She spent a few nights herded into lock-ups with other street girls back when she was younger, before she met Sarazin, and it was undeniably degrading and miserable. Remembering that doesn’t make her grateful to Sarazin, though. 

Sarazin is one of the people she hates, of course. Then there’s Rochefort, for that business with the files, and Thomas rounding out the list.

She doesn’t hate any of them because they hurt her, or threatened to hurt her, or even, in Sarazin’s case, because he came damn close to killing her. A lot of people have threatened to hurt her or kill her, and nearly as many have gone through with the attempt. She’s never had a job where she didn’t feel physically unsafe on a regular basis, and that includes when she was Thomas’s secretary. Compared to some of her previous clients, Rochefort didn’t come anywhere near doing permanent damage, and Thomas never left so much as bruise. And threats, who cares about threats? In her time working with Armand, death threats were a weekly occurrence. So it’s not about any of that.

It’s that all three of them made her feel powerless. Not just that, they _enjoyed_ making her feel powerless. Most of the time, she can stay in control when people threaten her, even when they hurt her. She mocks them, she’s collected, she’s calm, she’s almost amused by their attempts to intimidate or frighten her. She keeps her power. They can’t take it from her. But with Sarazin, she was too young to have that kind of poise, and with Rochefort and Thomas, she was too shaken by her history suddenly being shoved in her face to retain her usual self-assurance. Something about her past being brought up unexpectedly by other people just takes her back every time, makes her fifteen again, faking the self-confidence it took her years to really get. She regresses. She becomes weak. Helpless. It’s the worst feeling in the world.

And as well as doing that to her, all three of them stripped something away from her, something that mattered. Whether the encounter ended with her fleeing or with them walking away, they still triumphed over her, they still _won_. She was left weaker, humiliated, lost, while they got to feel smug and powerful, even if none of their victories against her were absolute and she certainly made them suffer for any triumph they got. Even Sarazin, however infuriated he must be that she’s successfully evaded him for so long, gets to know that she can never settle, never feel entirely safe – gets to know that her past will always stick to her like mud, however much she tries to wash it off.

Richelieu knew her past, of course. He wasn’t above mentioning it, either, on occasion. He sometimes liked to remind her where the power was in their working relationship. But she knew he valued her, knew he needed her, even, and so it had never made her feel completely powerless. It had just been his way of trying to assert authority, which had almost seemed to give her more power than it took away, because it meant he felt he _needed_ to assert his authority. For the most part he spoke to her as an equal as much as an employee, and he had always respected and admired her skills. To her surprise, she misses him. She’d known if anything ever happened to him she’d miss his protection, his generous compensation for her work, and his cunning and ruthlessness, but she hadn’t expected to miss him as a person. And yet she does. Her world contains a lot less snide, snarky comments than it used to.

What would he say if he could see her now? He’d probably be offended by her working with the Musketeers, she thinks. And who knows what he’d make of this hotel – it’s actually more of a bar, in fact, it just has three tiny, disgusting bedrooms above it, that are clearly there in case any drunk patrons want to employ one of the nice women around these parts. She’s already had to dissuade a few men who leapt to the erroneous impression that she’s for hire as well. The rooms are very cheap, but the rates are hourly, not nightly. She’s probably the first person ever to pay for three nights in one go, and she’s honestly worried about getting some kind of disease from the sheets. Armand would rather have burnt it to the ground than risk entering, she’s sure.

“On the house,” the bartender says, giving Milady an oily smile.

She returns it with a cold one of her own and looks thoughtfully at the drink. Right. This has to be it. She’s been hanging out in the bar for a few hours each night to give any potential abductors a chance to catch sight of her, and in that time, the bartender’s shown no interest in her at all. His gaze hasn’t lingered on her tits or her ass. He hasn’t tried to get into conversation with her. Maybe that’s because she’s wearing much more fabric than most of the women he sees (she’s still trying to cover a fading collection of bruises and hickeys, out of some misguided sympathy for Athos’s embarrassment). Or maybe he’s not interested in women, or just not interested full stop, or is a romantic who already has a special someone (rare, especially in places like this, but possible). Whatever the reason, he’s seemed to not even notice her… until now.

And now he’s offering her a free drink? A free drink, in a place so cheap that they probably pour the dregs of people’s glasses back into the bottles for reuse? 

“I think I’m being drugged,” she murmurs, just loud enough that the listening device well-hidden behind her right ear can catch it. She tilts the glass. Is the cheap red wine slightly paler than should be? It smells the same, and when she rolls a very, very small sip around her mouth it tastes the same as well, but that means nothing. A lot of sedatives have no taste or smell.

It would probably be a good idea to drink it – it’s easier to be unconscious than to fake unconsciousness. But she instinctively shies away from leaving herself that defenceless, especially if it turns out this isn’t an abduction attempt, but something else. So instead with a little bit of sleight of hand, the drink ends up soaking the dark carpet at her feet, only a little bit of it dyeing her lips red. The bartender’s keeping a close eye on her despite pretending not to, but she’s very good at this, and she knows he thinks he drank it when he relaxes slightly. 

She giggles and tells him in a slightly slurred voice, “Thanks. Very nice.” She lets her eyes slide nearly closed but studies him carefully through the slits – he doesn’t look at all surprised that she seems to have gotten falling-down drunk from one half-glass of wine. Definitely drugged, then. She gets off the barstool and staggers. “Feel… weird,” she tells him earnestly. “Gonna lie down. Upstairs.”

He nods, but doesn’t offer to help her up there, which is a relief – if he had another reason to drug her, that would be the perfect opportunity to follow her into her room. So he’s probably drugging her for someone else. Fingers crossed it’s Sarazin’s men, and that they won’t want to touch the boss’s girl inappropriately, even if she hasn’t been the boss’s girl for over a decade now. If it’s not Sarazin’s men, she’ll happily teach whoever it is not to go around paying bartenders to roofie people. Assholes.

“I’m back in the room now,” she says under her breath, because she has a sneaking suspicion if she doesn’t, her ex-husband might come running in under the erroneous assumption that she needs his help. “I didn’t take the drug, but they think I did.”

She lies there, waits, thinks. She’s seen more than a few drugged people in her life, so it’s easy enough to flop and let her limbs loll out like they do, breathe in that slightly too slow rhythm, let her face go slack and useless. She has a knife under the pillow, pepper spray under the bed, and a baton in her bag nearby, but she doesn’t keep hold of any of them, even though it’s tempting. It would be too obvious. She hasn’t bothered to bring the rest of her assorted arsenal of defensive tools, such as the tasers, because while it would be suspicious to have nothing at all to defend herself with she doesn’t want to lose most of her belongings to these idiots. It’s the same reason all her best breaking and entering tools are stashed elsewhere. Rare earth magnets are expensive, after all.

It doesn’t take them long to get there.

They shine a flashlight in her face. She’s not entirely sure why, since they could just turn the lights on and look twenty times less suspicious, but apparently Sarazin’s people have gotten worse since they stopped having her around as a role model.

Rough fingers grip her chin, pull it to the left, pull it to the right. She keeps playing unconscious.

“It’s her,” the man hisses. “After all this fucking time. Get her tied.”

They yank her over to her front. Her hands are bound behind her back with two zip-ties. They gag her. She thinks: Christ, what fucking morons. If she was unconscious, there’d be a decent chance she’d choke to death, leaving them with a dead body and some awkward explanations to make. If she was conscious and willing to break her cover, she could have stabbed the first one in the hand when he touched her and pepper sprayed the other, and had both of them on the ground in under five seconds. And one of them recognises her, so he knew her back then, and he was still stupid enough to step that close without being certain she was out? Ten years ago she might not have been quite as dangerous as she is now, but she wasn’t _harmless_ , for God’s sake. She’s beginning to see why these two might be so desperate to rise in the ranks that they’d pay for potentially unreliable information on a decade-old disappearance.

“The bathroom at the end of the corridor that fuckwit told us about,” one hisses. “She could be bugged or something.”

“It won’t wake her up?”

“Not with the shit he gave her, no. Cut her clothes off.”

Alright, not complete idiots. She inwardly fumes as they strip her and hold her up under the cold spray of the shower. She’s frozen and shivering in seconds, but trying not to shiver too hard – she knows unconscious people shiver, but they might not. These two don’t normally bother to knock people out. She’s recognised the voices now – Guerin and Vouet, two of Sarazin’s stupider men. She’d turned Guerin down once when he suggested she cheat on Sarazin with him, which tells her everything she needs to know about his IQ and about why he’s so clearly enjoying this job. Enjoying it too much, in fact, given how handsy he is as he holds her there. Even though his hands are hot on her icy, clammy skin, she still wants to shrink away from them. She keeps her eyes shut and lets them get on with it, and thinks longingly of surprising them and taking them both down, starting with Guerin. It would be a valuable learning experience for him.

But it’s not her job to teach him a lesson today. Instead, she’s going to teach Sarazin one, and she’s been waiting to do that for a decade, so she can wait a little longer.

X_X_X_X

It’s been several days since Athos has had a drink – since Anne made that call to her friend Gallagher. That makes this the longest amount of time he’s spent totally sober in the past few years. It’s giving him a headache. Last night, on one of the breaks from watching the hotel that the others have been forcing him to take, he’d considered downing some scotch just to deal with that, unable to decide if the headache was more or less incapacitating than being slightly tipsy. But then he’d thought, if something happens, and I’m too drunk to be useful, how will I live with that?

After this is over, he’s downing a whole bottle, though. Several bottles. All the bottles. This whole thing has taken years off his life. He spent a long time thinking it would be nice if his ex-wife would drop dead, as if that would somehow help him forget her, but it turns out he doesn’t want her dead anymore than he wants to forget her. In fact, her even being in danger of dying makes him want to break things. Apparently he doesn’t know himself as well as he thought.

“She’ll be fine,” Porthos says reassuringly, noticing that Athos is hunched over and fidgeting with the phone, always a sure sign he’s anxious. “I mean, did you see the tracker and the bug? Or not see, I guess. She wasn’t lying when she said she’s good at this.” Despite his reassurance, he’s frowning as well, and his eyes never leave the blinking dot of her tracker on his computer screen.

The bug’s behind her ear, with skin-coloured latex glued tightly over it. The joins are hidden with a type of liquid fake skin used in costuming. Someone would have to run their fingers over every inch of her skin to find the tiny bump, and even then might not realise it’s artificial in nature. The tracker’s in her mouth, hidden just as well, and they won’t find it unless they decide to physically remove what looks like a filling. The depth and breadth of her skillset still manages to surprise him each time she demonstrates it.

Right now, he’s got her phone in his hand. It’s what he’s fidgeting with. She handed it over casually, showed him how to operate it, what numbers to key in to get to the specific bug she’s wearing. He noticed immediately there was what basically amounted to a library, showing lots of other bugs, and he still hasn’t figured out if she was testing to see if he’d check any others without permission or if she was trying to show that he _could_ check the others as proof she’s not doing anything underhanded. In the end, he’d checked two of the other bugs briefly when he had eyes on her and knew she wasn’t in the process of being snatched – one had just been static, and the other he thought might be in a judge’s chambers based on the discussion in progress. How many bugs does she _have_?

Since then, he’s been on her channel all the time, and hasn’t taken the headphones off once. He can hear her breathing, occasionally a sigh or a swallow, and the hum of background noise – glasses tinkling, music playing, people arguing, that kind of thing. Last night she must have spotted him in the car on the way in (at least, he _hopes_ she knew he was the one listening) because she treated him to some much less harmless noises after tucking herself into bed, including some gasped narration that was _really_ not fair. He swears grimly he’ll get her back for that once this is over, because he’s never been so uncomfortably aroused in his life, and definitely never while one of his friends was sitting next to him humming songs from _The Lion King_ tunelessly and staring out the other window oblivious to his discomfort.

And now they’re here again. It’s looking more and more likely that no one will show up, and she can just return to helping them in an advisory category, and –

“I think I’m being drugged.”

Athos sits up straight so quickly that if the car wasn’t a mammoth four-wheel drive, he would smack his head on the roof. Porthos looks over at his expression, swears under his breath and grabs for the door handle, ready to leap out at an order from Athos.

Athos hesitates, then shakes his head, even though every single one of his muscles is tensed with the desire to leap into action. She hadn’t sounded worried, just coolly amused. If they burst in, he suspects they’ll be the ones in danger, and it won’t be from Sarazin’s people. He takes the headphones out and raises the volume so Porthos can hear what’s happening too.

They both tense further as Anne starts slurring her words, but then Athos relaxes slightly. “She’s faking,” he tells Porthos under his breath, and a minute later, she confirms it.

She used to occasionally pretend to be drunker than she was off the couple of glasses of wine they were allowed whenever they had dinner parties at Thomas and Catherine’s place, purely to annoy Catherine, and that was the voice she always used, so he knows it well. He’d tried to be disapproving at the time but ended up just amused, because really, Catherine was so consistently rude and judgmental that their only option was to find ways to get enjoyment out of that. 

They listen in silence as the men tie her. Porthos is already texting Aramis and d’Artagnan. “They can meet us five blocks away, in ten minutes,” he says quietly. “On the corner with the out-of-business veterinary clinic.”

The back of the car already has their bulletproof vests and service weapons, as well as anything else they think they’re likely to need, so there’s nothing else to pick up besides the others. Luckily, it’s large enough that they’ll all still be able to fit in easily, especially with d’Artagnan and Athos hiding in the boot once they get close enough for it to matter. The information that everything he does apparently clearly spells out that he’s a cop and he’s well-off has been annoying Athos since Milady said it, although when he thinks about it, he supposes it shouldn’t exactly be news.

Everything gets a bit more tense again as they cut her clothes off. There’s the noise of the shower, and Athos can picture exactly what’s happening, but this specific mental image of his naked ex-wife is completely non-sexual, for once. Instead, it’s maddening in a completely different way. Hell, it’s torturous. He has no idea what they could be doing to her, but she hasn’t made a noise and she hasn’t asked for help, so he hopes that means they’re not hurting her. He wants to go in there and beat the shit out of these idiots, and then throw them in jail, and then beat the shit out of them again for good measure. Still, he forces his mind to stay on the job, although he’s shaking with visceral rage. How _dare_ they.

“There,” Athos says under his breath eventually, although there’s no real reason to be quiet. There’s also no reason to duck or hide, since it’s a dark street and the windows of the car are tinted, so he doesn’t bother. Seeing them sends another surge of rage through him. “Three o’clock.”

Porthos nods, taking a series of quick pictures. Besides anything else, it’ll be photographic evidence placing these men at the sight of an abduction. They’re pretending that Milady is a drunk woman they’re helping, a long, overlarge fur coat draped around her, most likely the only item of clothing she has on now. It’s covering her bound hands, masking her face, and somewhat disguising her bare, dragging feet, but it’s still not very convincing – in a less-skeezy neighbourhood, someone would probably already be questioning what they’re doing. It only gets more obvious when they glance around to check for people, decide it’s clear, and quickly dump her into the boot of a car. “Careful,” Athos hears one of them snap to the other over the bug.

“We could grab them, interrogate them,” Porthos says, also quietly. “Maybe they’d lead us to Sarazin, yeah? Less risky.”

Athos tries not to grind his teeth, mostly at how badly he wants to go with that suggestion. But even if they only held out against interrogation for a short time, it might be too late to get to Sarazin, if his henchmen going missing alerted him people were after him. “No. We play this her way.”

Over the listening device and in real life, they hear the sound of the boot slamming shut, and then the car starting. It’s extremely difficult for Athos not to start the car the moment they do. It’s even more difficult to wait until they’re gone.

Athos passes the phone over to d’Artagnan when the others get in, and then just concentrates on driving. Thanks to the tracker, it’s easy enough to stay a few streets back from them as they make their way through the city.

A loud screech and a car horn come from the bug, making all of them wince. “Motherfucker!” one of the men curses loudly.

“Taking the turns much too fast,” Porthos observes, watching the tracker. “Guess driving with an unconscious woman in the back might freak me out too. Or maybe they’re just homesick.”

“Knowing our luck, traffic cops will pick them up and find Milady,” Aramis says. “Now won’t that make this the best night ever.”

It’s still easy for Athos to keep pace, and without making anyone beep at him or curse him like they are at these idiots. At the speed they’re going, it’s not too long before they’re out of the city, speeding even more recklessly, way above the limit. Again, though, it’s easy for Athos – he keeps a steady few miles behind them and listens intently to the phone d’Artagnan’s still holding and for Porthos’s update on the tracker, waiting with bated breath for any sign they might be looking for somewhere to dump a body instead of returning to Sarazin. If she gets herself killed with this plan, he’s never going to forgive her.

He wonders how she’s holding it together so well, locked up in that boot. Back when they were married, she used to get panic attacks – rarely, and she covered for them extremely well, but he still knew about them. When a scarf she was wearing got caught on a tree and throttled her for a moment, when a man in a bar said some things he shouldn’t have, when she woke up tangled in lots of layers of blankets. It was almost random – sometimes minor things would trigger her, and sometimes much more upsetting things wouldn’t. She’d told him that it was just one of those things, and he’d never pushed further, telling himself he was respecting her privacy. 

“I thought I heard a noise from back there,” the man says suspiciously after a while, voice barely distorted by the bug. “We should check on her. Can’t have her banging on the boot.”

“I’ve got another dose,” the other man says. “Stop the car.”

Athos pulls over as they do, to avoid catching up with or overtaking them.

“How do we tell if it’s worn off? If she ODs -”

“Easy test,” the second guy says. “You hold their hand above their face and drop it, if they’re not out, they try and move it so it doesn’t hit. Can’t stop themselves. Automatic reaction.”

“Wait, let me try something else. See if she reacts to _this_.”

“You can’t hit her. I told you before, be careful. Sarazin will -”

“He wants her alive. I don’t think he’ll give a shit if she’s a bit banged up. Besides, I’ve wanted to punch this bitch in the face for fifteen fucking years.” There’s a heavy thudding noise, horrifyingly loud over the listening device, and all of them wince. Athos clenches his fists hard on the steering wheel. “No reaction at all. Shame.”

Then Porthos looks up, sudden worry on his face. “Fuck,” he says. “Tracker went out.”

“ _What?!_ ”

“They must’ve hit her at just the right angle,” Porthos says, managing to control his panic, while still being obviously worried. “Or just the wrong one. Why does this shit always happen to us?”

“Shit, shit, shit,” Aramis says with feeling. “We can’t fucking follow them if -”

Athos pulls back onto the road. A part of him is frantic as well, but he forces himself to coldly analyse the options. “D’Artagnan, bring up maps for the area, and listen closely to the background noise on the bug. It’s still working, right? We’ll hear it when they leave the main highways.”

“Right,” d’Artagnan says, pulling out his phone as well.

“Good thinking,” Aramis says. “Porthos, pass me your phone as well. You said you had pictures, right? If we have the license plate I can start searching over traffic cameras.”

He won’t get them in real time, Athos knows, but they probably came from the same place they’re going to, and they might have been flagged for risky driving before. Porthos starts looking up the owner’s details.

“If they punched her hard enough to knock that out -” Athos begins, then swallows the bile that rises at the thought. The thud was deafening even through the bug. She’s probably mildly concussed at least, which means that unconscious or not, she’s largely defenceless. 

“I’m sure she’s fine.”

“No, I mean – she’ll have felt the tracker be knocked out. She’s in the boot right now, and probably gagged, so she can’t speak to us. But the second they take the gag off -”

“She’ll start passing messages,” Aramis says, light dawning. “Trying to say where she thinks she is. If they let her see a street sign -”

“Exactly,” Athos says. “All we need to do is get close enough to get there in time once she does. Then we can be ready.” He hopes.

X_X_X_X

Aramis’s favourite thing about working for the taskforce is the way their cases are so varied. It means their plans are equally as varied. Everything always goes off the rails. They have to think outside the box and on their feet at the same time. He gets bored easily when it comes to following repetitive steps. He gets bored easily in general. These past few days have been deeply dull, spending all hours either in a car outside a hotel or crashed out asleep.

Of course, it’s probably been worse for d’Artagnan, given he has an irate fiancée and a wedding happening so soon. And for Athos, what with his seemingly terminal case of overprotectiveness and self-enforced sobriety. But Aramis is definitely the third-most annoyed. Porthos seems completely unbothered.

In any case, normally Aramis would be quite upbeat about these little setbacks. They’ve made it through worse challenges. However, normally they’re the ones at risk. And while there’s no one he cares about more than his friends – more than friends, his family, his brothers, practically – they’re normally all at risk _together_ , and they’re damn good at getting out of bad situations. Of course, sometimes they investigate kidnappings or abductions, and then there’s someone else at risk, but that’s a little different too. It’s highly unnerving to think that if he can’t find where they’re going, they might all get to listen to Athos’s ex-wife get brutally murdered over a very high-quality listening device. 

Aramis is the best with technology – well, most technology, in most ways. For some reason Porthos does much better than him at every single game, from Angry Birds to Skyrim. It’s aggravating. He must be cheating somehow. Anyway, it means Aramis normally takes charge with these kind of things. He tries to ping the bug, to no success. If they were back at the precinct he might be able to, but then they’d be out of range to help, and that would be even worse.

“I’ve got the owner of the car, but since it’s a sixty-five-year-old woman, it won’t help,” Porthos reports.

“A fake ID or a theft?”

“Carjacking,” Porthos says after a few moments of clicking, sounding pissed off. “She reported it. They ambushed her when she was getting into it at the shopping centre, gave her a black eye, pushed her down, and took the keys. One month ago.”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m starting not to like these guys,” Aramis says. He closes his eyes for a moment in annoyance. “Luckily, I was only running traffic violations for the past few weeks to start with, but this means that I can’t go back further if there’s nothing. I suppose I could try different search criteria -”

“Left here,” d’Artagnan says, head bobbing up from the phone for a moment. He’s been doing well at this, as far as Aramis can tell. They’re probably at least headed for the right city.

“How can you tell whether it’s left or right?” Aramis wonders.

“They’re taking the corners really aggressively,” d’Artagnan says absently, still concentrating. “She hits the side of the boot every time they turn, but she hits differently depending which way they go. Either her head or her feet. It’s louder when it’s her head, because the bug’s there.”

“Science,” says Aramis, mock awe covering actual admiration. Then he thinks of something else. “Does anyone have painkillers on them? She’s definitely going to need a few by the time this is over.”

“Or just an ambulance.”

“Right, fair. Good idea. If we’re going to call the local cops to come help us out, we may as well get an ambulance on standby as well.”

“We’ll need to call the locals last minute,” Athos reminds them darkly. “Otherwise whoever he’s working with will have time to warn him. He must have quite a few people around his place on his payroll.”

“Christ, at the rate this is going, even I’ll stop trusting the police, and I _am_ the police,” Aramis says, disgusted.

“Way ahead of you there,” Porthos grumbles.

“Oh, you know what I mean. They’re working for Rochefort, they’re working for Sarazin… this is absurd. We’re not _that_ underpaid.” It’s possible Aramis takes dirty cops more personally than the others do. His best friend before he met Porthos turned out to be one, after all, even if it was for what he thought was a more noble cause. He still can’t think of Marsac without feeling a mix of guilt and anger. 

Aramis is worried about Athos, worried about what this will do to him if it goes bad. Aramis goes through periods of being worried about all of his friends, just like they all do – he fretted about d’Artagnan when things with Constance went poorly, and when his father died; he tried his best to be there for Porthos through his search for his biological father and all those problems with Charon and Flea; and the others supported him through Marsac’s return and Ana deciding to stay with Louis. In the past, he thought that Athos’s low points were to do with cases that didn’t go as well as they could, such as the Mendoza case or the Larroque case. He feels stupid for not realising that the cases weren’t the common thread, _she_ was.

It’s strange to think that despite Athos’s confessions about their marriage, he still has no idea what happened. None of them do, as far as he knows. A nasty divorce is one thing, but this seems like something else. He’s not even sure if he wants to know all of it. He’s on the fence now about whatever it is the two of them are doing. Athos’s bruises weren’t a good sign, and judging by the outfits Milady’s been wearing she has her own set of them, but they’ve both seemed nicer and less angry since then, less like they’re about to murder each other at any given moment. And if it was consensual, well, Aramis is worldly enough not to judge.

He does think it’s a bit of a shame Milady is a) Athos’s ex-wife, b) a criminal, and c) completely lacking moral fibre. This plan requires balls of solid steel – or, well, whatever the feminine equivalent of that term is. Despite all the insults she throws his way, he’d quite like to be allowed to like her for coming up with it. Sometimes he thinks Porthos already does, but then, Porthos has a soft spot for those with backgrounds like his. And Milady de Winter may be insulting, infuriating, callous, and have a history of ruining lives, but there’s no denying she’s interesting to have around.

Aramis’s laptop beeps.

“Please tell me that’s a result, and not it running out of power,” Athos says. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

“Several results,” Aramis says, a grin starting to spread across his face. “All in the same area. It looks like our friend is a dangerous driver even when he hasn’t abducted someone that day.” He reels off the probable area, then returns to typing away quickly on the laptop.

Hopefully Milady can narrow it down when they undo the gag, but even if she can’t, they should at least be able to figure it out soon. They’ll have gone to some effort to make things look legitimate, of course – maybe it’ll be listed as someone’s residence, maybe as a company. But there’s always a giveaway, and they’re good at finding giveaways. Despite all the danger for Milady, in a way it feels good to finally be doing something, to be useful and proactive. Instead of sitting around watching Richelieu’s Dullest Home Videos (do they count as cat videos thanks to Francois?) or staring intently at the outside of the sleaziest hotel in the world.

“They’re stopping,” d’Artagnan says, face brightening. “Parking. Opening the boot.”

“We’re still twenty minutes from even being close to the right area,” Athos says, voice twisted with fear, and he speeds up. The world outside is a blur by now. They’ve all been in the car when Athos drives fast before, but this is something else.

Aramis returns his attention to the laptop, but it’s difficult. He’s no longer sure if Milady’s the one most likely to die today. The music of honking , squeals, and shouted insults follow them as they race through the streets.

X_X_X_X

Her face _hurts_. Not just her face, her neck as well, even her upper back. She’d forgotten how badly a good right-hook could fuck you up. The gag is already red with blood – her teeth have cut open the inside of her cheek and the salty taste is disgusting. She can also feel a hard, cold little shard floating loose in her mouth. For a moment, in that first dizzying, head-spinning lurch of pain and nausea, she’d thought it was a tooth. It wasn’t, of course. The tracker’s probably broken beyond repair. She’ll have to try and spit it out without them seeing – but at least she has a decent excuse for spitting, with her mouth so full of blood.

The wider implications: there is now no way for Athos and the others to find her. She considers this for a few moments, then dismisses it. She can try and figure out where she is and let them know over the bug, which seems intact, but failing that there’s not much she can do about it. She supposes she’ll have to have faith in their professional skills. That thought is so depressing it makes her feel even worse.

The top of her head also hurts from being whacked against the boot every time they turned. She could brace with her feet the other way, but she almost didn’t want to, because anything which moved her head a little bit away from the pain was good with her, even if it hurt her legs. Digging into her back, there’s the corner of a metal toolbox, which she hates intensely, and a pair of pliers some idiot left out of it has been steadily gouging its way into her hip. It may have left a permanent impression. She’s dried off since the shower, just about, but she almost misses the coldness of it – the big coat and the small boot have steadily boiled her over the last hour. 

In short, she’s miserable, banged-up, exhausted, sweaty, red-faced, in significant pain, messy, rumpled, and wearing something she is slightly worried she’ll be seen dead in. Not exactly what a woman would prefer when running into an ex she hasn’t seen for a decade – and when the ex happens to be an abusive crime lord and the ‘running into’ is a staged abduction, it’s even less desirable a situation.

She’s pictured herself seeing Sarazin again, of course, once or twice. Generally she imagined attending his trial in her most expensive outfit, smiling at him smugly. This couldn’t be further from that.

Of course, if she pulls this off, he will be tried. And she’ll testify. She’s not especially looking forward to that part, but that does mean she can attend his trial, and she will wear one of her most expensive outfits. She decides to make that thought her happy place.

Unbidden, Athos’s face floats into her mind. That’s – well, a different kind of happy place. And a few to pick from, for that matter. There’s the warmth that cocooned them when they were married, shutting out the world until it broke its way in to ruin them. The music that played at their wedding, as they danced, smiling at each other like fools. And then there’s the other morning, the two of them steadily working each other up, relearning each other’s bodies with every stroke and kiss, finally in sync again, even if it was just in pursuit of passion instead of love.

She’s getting sentimental. How disgusting.

The car’s stopped. She has a moment to think – should she pretend to still be unconscious? And then she decides against it. She needs to spit out the remnants of the tracker before they get inside. What might go unnoticed on a street won’t on floorboards or carpet. Of course, Sarazin’s lair – and she guesses he probably does call it a lair, as overdramatic as he is – could have floors so nasty no one will ever notice, but she can’t bank on that. Besides, she can’t keep her eyes shut – she needs to try and figure out where she is.

So when they yank her out she allows herself to let out the groan of pain she’s been holding in for so long.

“Fuck, she’s awake,” Guerin says.

Milady blinks her watery eyes open. The world swims before her gaze. They let her down just enough for her feet to touch the ground, but the moment they’re not carrying all her weight, she nearly folds up. Putting weight on her legs after they’ve been bent uncomfortably all this time is difficult.

“Hey,” Vouet says, snapping his fingers in front of her eyes. “Hey, bitch.”

Sparkling repartee. She tries to focus on him, and this time she manages. Once her eyes have adjusted, though, she ignores the throbbing pain her head that worsens as she moves it and takes a look around the area. No conveniently located street signs, unfortunately. There is a liquor shop, though.

This time, when they let her stand, she’s able to remain upright. The ground is rough against her bare feet.

She makes a weak, desperate little noise against the gag, then starts hyperventilating, widening her eyes in assumed panic. Every too-quick breath makes her head ache even more, but in moments she seems genuinely to be choking, curling up as if she can’t breathe at all. She pushes some of the blood out the side of her mouth, so that it drips down to her chin – disgusting, but convincing.

Guerin cuts off the gag with a wicked looking knife, narrowly missing slicing the outside of her swollen cheek to match the inside. “Scream all you like,” he tells her. “No one to hear you here.”

Good lord. It’s not like she has high expectations, but come on. Really? Is he trying to be a walking cliché?

The second the gag’s removed, she spits blood on the road in front of him. The little glint of metal would be easy to miss, bloodstained as it is, but to help keep him distracted she croaks out, “I think I remember you. Guerin, right? I see you’re still Sarazin’s little lapdog.”

“And you’re still a mouthy bitch who should have been taught a lesson long ago,” Guerin snaps, attention immediately focused on her. “I should’ve shown you a thing or two back then.”

“You tried, but from what I recall, it was too small to interest me,” she says. It’s the low-hanging fruit of insults, really, but since she’s dealing with low-hanging fruit in general here she may as well use it.

They yank her towards one of the buildings roughly, and she keeps pace to avoid more bruises.

“Not even a drink first, for old time’s sake?” she asks breathlessly. “I’ll buy the bottle and everything.” It won’t narrow it down much for them, but she can’t see a name on the liquor store, so it’s probably the best she can do. Well, what else is there around? No signs, no street numbers. But when she inhales she can smell it and when the noise of distant traffic lets up for a moment she can hear it – running water, probably a stream of some kind, a river.

“Shut up,” Vouet says, but he stops Guerin from hitting her again. “You already banged her up enough. If Sarazin gets pissed off at you for breaking her face -”

“Concrete shoes for you,” Milady sings the words as happily as she can manage despite how awful she feels, only barely stopping herself from saying ‘you two’. Her first reference to numbers has to tell the others how many people are inside. She needs to be careful not to use any numbers until then, although surely even the Musketeers wouldn’t assume there were only two people in Sarazin’s place.

Still, that reference should at least tell them water, unless they’re as dim as she sometimes fears. They’re inland, so there’s not a whole lot of water around. “Does Sarazin do that now? He always seemed like the sort who’d spiral into cartoon villainy.” She’s genuinely curious, but they don’t answer.

Then she’s inside the building. It’s surprisingly fancy, but that’s not what catches her attention. The liquor store probably doesn’t have as intense a smell of booze as this place does. It nearly overpowers the rotten-egg waft of meth cooking. More than all of that, though, it smells like the past – the smell of men who’ve drunk and thrown up and pissed and had sex, all without learning how to clean or employing anyone to do it. Some might say it’s the smell of poverty, but she’s known people with no money and no reason to care who still kept their floors clean enough to eat off, even when there was nothing to eat off them. Instead, it’s the smell of a very specific kind of squalor and filth, the kind Sarazin loves. It won’t be where he lives – he’ll own a fairly nice place somewhere, like he used to, like the house with the pretty bedroom she used to share with him. But this is one of the places he works, and where his people have to work, and Sarazin likes to cultivate the worst kind of gutter stink in those places to remind everyone where they came from and where they’ll go if they don’t please him.

They push her up the stairs, ignoring the half-dozen open doors on the way. There’s where the smell of meth is coming from (a fire hazard if ever she’s seen one), there’s a drunk man enjoying himself with two girls (and they are _girls_ , not women, and they are not enjoying it by their expressions), there’s a drunken game of cards (she supposes even Sarazin’s people can have legal fun as well), and there’s the closed door at the end of the hallway that she knows Sarazin is behind. It’s just like him, to make people go the whole way through the house, getting more and more nervous, to get to him. But in this case, she doesn’t get nervous – she counts.

He looks up when she enters, expression sharpening immediately. “It’s actually you,” he says, sounding surprised, even faintly offended.

“Sarazin! It’s been too long,” she drawls, because if she’s going to die, she’ll die sarcastic. She can feel her heart beating too fast. Her headache recedes, but her legs feel, if anything, more unsteady. She needed more time to pull up her shields, to prepare herself. This is a part of her past she never wanted to revisit. She’s dangerously close to a panic attack and she knows it – this is a medley of several things which usually triggers them. “It’s been, what, a dozen years?” And now the Musketeers know roughly the number of people here – or at least, people likely to be threats.

Sarazin gives a nod to Guerin and Vouet, and they force her down. Her knees hit the floor painfully and the coat sags. With her hands still zip-tied behind her, she can’t do anything to fix it up. It’s not quite enough to flash him, but his gaze darts down to her newly bared skin, to the fading bite marks.

“You on your knees in front of me,” Sarazin says, stepping forward and tracing his hand down her face, giving her that manic grin he always flashed when he was having a very good day. “Covered in bruises. Now there’s a familiar sight, yeah?” His finger trace along her scar, back and forth, back and forth. She would like to bite his hand off. “Brings me back, it does.”

People from her past always seem to pull her back to who she was then too, at least a little – with Athos, that’s not always unpleasant. With Sarazin, it is. If Athos and the others are hearing this, she knows exactly what inference they’re making from the comment about her being on her knees, and she almost wishes that’s what he was talking about. But no, it was the first time she robbed a place and it went wrong, there was someone home, she fucked up, she failed. He’d screamed at her for hours, called her every name in the book, and since she’d been exhausted and scared at the start by the end she’d been on her knees sobbing and begging for him to forgive her just so he’d let her go to bed and end the fucking day. Even now, the memory of how raw and lost she was back then has the ability to humiliate her.

She’d thought at the time that he treated her like a child because she just didn’t know enough yet, was just a little ignorant, little bit clueless – it had never crossed her mind she actually was a child. Then she’d gotten older and savvier and known the business just as well as he did, had better skills in some ways, and he’d still talked down to her and scolded her and had the ability to turn her into that lost, panicking little girl again, desperate for his forgiveness because he was all she had. People like him always knew the right buttons to press, and he’d pressed them over and over again, until they’d turned from buttons into bruises that would never heal.

“So how’s tricks?” he asks, like this is just a friendly catch up.

“Your information’s a _little_ out of date if you think I’m still in that line of work.”

“Yeah? You think you left this world behind?” He laughs. “You’ll always stink of the gutter to me. I bet you smell it on yourself, as well. It’s more than what you do, it’s who you are. Can’t clean off the kind of shit you’ve rolled in.”

“Clearly,” she says, looking him up and down with very deliberate disgust.

“Ha! Nice.” His grin widens and he crouches before her, so they’re the same height. “You got old, you know.”

“Well, if you will insist on chasing after teenagers…” she says.

“Despite that, it’s still lovely to see you again, my dear.”

“I go by Milady de Winter now,” she says sharply. It’s an effort to regain her hauteur while on her knees, bruised, and wearing cheap faux fur, but she manages it. “I suggest you call me that. Besides anything else, if you call me ‘dear’ again, I just might lose control of my stomach, and this place is disgusting enough already.” 

It’s not even an idle threat. She feels bile rising in her throat. She wants him to stop touching her.

“Such rudeness.” His hand tightens on her throat, just for a second, but then he lets it go and gives a playful pat to the side of her bruised face. “After everything I did for you. Could’ve got you locked up when you stole from me, could’ve lost my temper. Instead I took you in. I made you. You were nothing but a damaged little girl before me and I made you into one of the greats.”

“You made me?” She tries to give a light little laugh, but it goes sour somewhere in the middle, and her words are purely venomous. “No. I made me. I was a damaged little girl when you found me, sure, but you didn’t fix me, you just tried to break me completely.”

She needs to stop letting these words spill out. They’re too full of emotion. They’re too raw.

She can’t stop. “Because the only way you know how to make something yours is to break it. But I was never yours, Sarazin. And I got out.” 

Sarazin laughs as well, honestly incredulous. “I didn’t break you. I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to, deep down. You always liked ruining lives, hurting people, leaving them with nothing. Least I admit it.” 

“I’m glad you’ve found something to be proud of,” she spits, and Guerin grabs her hair and twists it too roughly, making tears start in her eyes. 

“Enough,” Sarazin says to Guerin, looking annoyed, and he stops immediately. Then Sarazin turns back to her, shaking his head. “You can’t tell the truth about anything, can you? Not who you are and not what you did back then. Can’t even admit that what happened was your fault, that you got too greedy and fucked up, that you shouldn’t have betrayed me.”

“And that’s what you want from me, isn’t it?” Realisation dawns. She’d been good at reading people back then, and half a decade with Armand has only improved her skills. “You didn’t spend ten years looking for me to get diamonds. You didn’t even do it to get revenge. You want validation.”

They stare at each other in silence for a few moments, and then she lets a silky smile transform her face. Another layer of armour. “Well, get me a fucking chair to sit on, then, and something strong to drink. If we’re going to reminisce, I’ll need one. Hurry up, will you?”

“Hah!” Sarazin’s laughter sounds more like a bark. “No power, no leverage, no chance of surviving, and you still throw orders? Wonderful! Think you’re royalty, just because you scraped up a little money and power? None of it lasted. Look at you now.” He finally stops touching her face, glances at her captors. “You, get her a chair. Hell, get her a drink too, and cut her loose. May as well show respect to her majesty here.”

Guerin does, with bad grace, and within a few minutes they’re seated and she has scotch. Her husband’s preferred drink. In one way, that’s comforting, but in another way it’s horrifying – she’d forgotten it was Sarazin’s drink of choice as well.

“Cheers,” she says anyway, and raises her glass in an ironic toast. “So what did you want to talk about?”


	10. Pulling the Trigger

Guerin and Vouet have gone to stand at the door now, like bodyguards instead of thugs, which she supposes is Sarazin’s way of trying to mimic the upper classes. Despite bragging to everyone about being from the streets and never leaving, he has a love-hate relationship with them as a concept – behind all that pretend pride is a big helping of hatred, shame, and raw envy for people who have it better. She can understand it because in some ways, she shares it.

“Hasn’t been the same without you, _Milady_. Ever since you abandoned me –“

“You tried to kill me,” she says bluntly, not willing to let this one pass. They’ve been talking for a while now, and it’s hardly the first time he’s implied she’s at fault, but she’s getting pretty sick of everyone blaming her for everything.

Again, that bark of laughter. “As if you wouldn’t have done the same.” 

She nods, “Hmm, fair. But I would have done it with my own two hands.”

“I did,” he says with a smirk, and he looks like he wants to reach across the grubby table and stroke her scar again. His expression is that of an artist looking at his greatest work, but that might not be about the scar, it might just be her – impossible to say. He’s always seen her as his masterwork.

“Not this time,” she says, leaning back slightly and taking a sip of her drink. “This time, you sent Tweedledee and Tweedledum here after me. I’m insulted. I thought I would at least rate Sofia and Francesco.” There, her actual goal. She’s relieved to have forced her mind back into gear again. The past is a minefield. Best not to cross it, but if you have no choice then at least make sure you’re going somewhere worthwhile.

“Eh, they’re somewhere in Spain right now, would take one hell of a payout to bring them back here. Cheaper to use my own men. Anyway, I didn’t want you dead. Not yet,” he adds, with that grin of his that never fails to make her shudder. “Surprised it was so easy, though. Didn’t that fancy boss of you teach you anything?”

“Class?” she drawls.

“You think I don’t have any?” He makes a mock offended face, but she thinks she can see real offense hidden behind it anyway. 

She shouldn’t push it, but a few of his comments have hit her hard, and when she’s hit, she hits back. There’s that weak spot of his, and she makes her words a knife for it. “You know you don’t. You’re just a thug hiding in a shack with delusions of grandeur. Richelieu would have looked down his nose at you, if he deigned to look at you at all.”

She can see the flash of real fury in his eyes now.

“Is that why you went to work for him? Hoping some of that would rub off on you? So superior, sneering at me. But I remember what you were back then.” He pauses, making her wait for the insults she knows are coming, for the hit to her gut. “Such a poor, pathetic, desperate, _grasping_ little bitch, willing to do anything it took to get out of the gutter. And I got you out. You used to be grateful to me for that.”

“You paid me to act grateful, if you remember.” She makes her voice ice, her face hard. “You also paid me to pretend to want you. I might’ve been pathetic enough to have to sell affection, but you were pathetic enough to need to buy it. After all, who would care about you without a material incentive?”

“Oh, I never thought you cared about me,” he says it almost casually. His smirk reappears. “Never thought you cared about anyone. All you ever cared about was the money. That’s why I liked you so much. You were just like me. You thought a bit smaller, were a bit cheaper, bit pettier, but otherwise… the same. Broke my heart when you left.” 

“Don’t playact for me, Sarazin, it’s wasted. You never loved me. You’re not capable of it.”

“Yeah, and you’re not capable of it either. But that’s alright. Saves you a lot of pain. Since we both know that anyone who sees who you are? What you are? They ain’t going to love you.”

The first comment doesn’t bother her, because she knows damn well she is capable of love, although whether that’s a good thing is debatable. It didn’t bother her when she thought she wasn’t, either, because back then she would’ve agreed with him that it was better not to be that weak.

But the second part… that one hits. That one hits hard, because there’s truth in it, because there’s always been truth in it. He used to tell her that a lot back then, and every time, it landed. She’s always known she’s not exactly lovable. Too manipulative, too cruel, too low-class, too calculating, too grasping, too hardened by life. She could pretend to be someone lovable, just like she could make herself desirable, or fascinating, or pitiable, or adorable, or even saintly, or really any part she chose to play – but as soon as all those roles were gone, she wasn’t the kind of person people loved. Just look at her husband’s response when he saw the cracks in her mask of small-town sweetheart. Oh, there may still be love there behind everything else, but it’s a twisted, warped version of what he used to feel, and that’s because it’s for a twisted, warped version of the idealised woman he originally fell for, the one she could never quite manage to entirely be. Real, healthy, happy love is for good people, and she’s not a good person. Back then, Athos was. But somehow she managed to ruin him too, didn’t she? Or maybe they ruined each other.

Sarazin continues before she can say anything. “No one could love you, not really, not if they knew you like I do. That’s why we were perfect for each other. I missed you.”

“My heart bleeds,” she spits the words, and drains her drink. The alcohol stings the cut on the inside of her cheek, and it tastes of blood.

“Nah, you’ve got no heart, no soul either, any more than I’ve got ‘em. All you got’s a nasty, twisted little core of self-interest, spite, and greed.” He takes a sip of his own drink, savouring it, but his avid gaze stays fixed on her face. He rolls the words in his mouth like he’s savouring them too. “And it’s the naked, desperate kind of greed, too. Anyone can see that. I always liked that as well. Made you good at this. Until you got _too_ greedy, right? Or maybe just too stupid, too arrogant. Thought you could steal from me as well.”

She tries to twist a little on the chair, stretching out muscles that ache from her time in the boot of the car. At least her hands are untied now. “You’ve been saving up this speech for a while, haven’t you? I hope it’s kept you warm on cold nights. You say I thought I could steal from you – well, if you’re right, I succeeded. And if you’re wrong, well… then you’re just wrong. Either way, it’s taken you more than a decade to even get a whiff of my trail, so I think my arrogance might be considered justified.”

Now his face twists into a scowl again. “I would’ve found you years ago if you hadn’t had help. I knew someone had to be covering your tracks. Never crossed my mind it was Richelieu, but it should’ve. Makes sense you’d go to work for him. All you ever needed was someone to take charge, to order you to do the kind of nasty things you wanted to do anyway, and that’s Richelieu all over.”

“I wasn’t aware you were acquainted,” she says lightly, more in control now he’s losing his temper again. It’s risky to continually anger someone who could have you killed at any moment, but considerably less emotionally damaging than letting him keep running through a list of highly triggering insults from the bad old days. He’s a few sentences away from starting to talk about how she deserves to have nothing and how worthless she is, and she can remember well how all those seemingly-childish insults slashed her like knives when he spoke them. From someone else, she wouldn’t even care about any of what he’s said, but when Sarazin says these things, he reopens the scars he left all those years ago. Abusive bastard.

“We weren’t. But I’ve heard a fair bit about him.”

And here’s her opportunity to get this back on track. It’s not exactly subtle, but she’ll take it. “From Rochefort?”

“How d’you know him?” Sarazin’s face tightens in suspicion.

“Former client,” she drawls, and then catches his expression. “From when I worked for Armand, not _that_ kind of client. Get your mind out of the gutter, will you? Imagine my surprise when I found out Rochefort and I had an acquaintance in common. Especially how you met.” She rolls those words over her tongue as if she’s talking about something scandalous, and waits for him to take the bait.

“Smug bastard told you about that?” His fury visibly rises. Sarazin’s always unpredictable, but now he’s shifting into being dangerous. “I’ll get him for it someday. What did he say, exactly?”

Oh, this is a bad idea. But it’s all she’s got. She wants him to start ranting. She wants him to give up the goods. “All he said was that you knew who was in charge.” She keeps her tone innocent, amused.

“In charge? _In charge_? That little weasel,” Sarazin roars suddenly. He pushes back from the table in one swift movement. “That fucking…” He stalks over to Guerin and grabs the man’s gun off him, face twisted in childish pique. “I’m the one in charge. He just doesn’t realise it yet. And apparently, you don’t either, _Milady de Winter_.”

_Ah,_ she thinks faintly. She’s definitely pushed him too far. He’s a few seconds from pulling the trigger. Her hands are untied, so she might be able to stop him, if he steps close enough, if she’s lucky, but then there are his two goons, and the other ten or so men scattered around the place. She should have used one of the signals minutes ago – there’s no chance Athos and the others will be in time now. 

She should try and use one of the code words anyway, of course. “Going to give me a scar to help me remember? But I already have such a lovely token from you.”

He turns the gun on her, and she thinks of Athos. She thinks of him staring into her eyes on their wedding day as they exchanged vows, and she thinks of him laughing beside her in the car as they sped down country roads, and she thinks of him naked and wound about her in their bed, and she thinks of him dancing with her in a ballroom, and she thinks of him telling her they would forever have unfinished business. Always, she thinks of him, and it feels right to have the last thought be of him as well. 

She’d rather not have her last thought be now, though, so she grips the glass of scotch in her hand, ready to throw it at Sarazin’s face as a distraction and then leap forward to do whatever she can to survive. She won’t make it, of course. If the table wasn’t in the way, maybe, but not with it right there. He’ll shoot her almost before she can throw the thing.

But the shot doesn’t come. Instead, they do.

X_X_X_X

He’s driving faster than he’s ever driven before, even in a fucking car chase. Using what Anne gave them, Aramis has found the place, and he’s almost certain it’s the right one. It’s the area the driving violations are from, it’s next to a liquor store, it’s near a river, it’s legally owned by a man who seems to have died seven years ago, and the street has a conspicuous lack of crimes listed by the local police. But it’s minutes away, so all he can do is hope Anne keeps the man occupied until then.

But, Jesus Christ, listening to them talk is making him feel sick. It’s not even what the man’s saying, although that’s not great, it’s the vulnerability in Anne’s voice as she replies. He doubts the others can hear it. Anne’s witty, poised, clever – even if they hear anger or hurt in her voice, the others will write it off as a manipulation. But he knows her too well. He knows that raw edge in her voice from when he’s thrown his worst insults at her, and suddenly it breaks his heart to think that he’s hurt her like this fucking creep is hurting her now. In more than one way, even if unlike Sarazin, he didn’t leave a scar.

Athos always thought the purest, darkest anger he could ever experience was when he walked in on his wife and his brother. At first, there’d been that lovely protective numbness, of course. But once it passed, there was nothing but red rage flowing through his system – strong enough to make him want to beat the younger brother he’d always protected into a bloody mess, strong enough to make him put his hands around the throat of the only woman he’s ever loved and _squeeze_. He’d thought it was the most powerful rage he could ever feel, hoped it was, even.

Apparently, he was incorrect. The sheer enormity of his fury is slightly shocking to him, both at the two men who tried to drug her, stripped her, abducted her and hurt her, and at the man who ordered it and seems so _proud_ to have done so.

Then they’re parked outside, and he should be hiding, but instead he leaps out and goes to the boot. He grabs a bulletproof vest, but it’s too small for him, so he throws it to d’Artagnan. The next one is his, though, and he yanks it on before loading himself up with guns.

“She hasn’t used any of the code words,” Porthos says, but he’s already copying Athos’s example anyway, shrugging into a vest.

The code words, which she’d mischievously pulled from their old collection of safe words, apparently purely to tease him without the others knowing: _flowers, forget-me-nots, field, token, chase._ He’d expected her to use the last, an easy word to slip into this conversation: to say _you’ve chased me for years, Sarazin_ , or something like that. She hasn’t. He doesn’t care.

“A dozen men, she said,” Athos snaps. “We can take them.”

“You don’t want to give her time to get more from him?”

He doesn’t want to say she’s lost control of this situation. He’s not even sure she has, exactly, it’s just that it was never a situation anyone could entirely control. But all her little jibes to the man, they don’t speak of trying to get him to spill information, not to Athos – they speak of emotional defence mechanisms, and he knows her defence mechanisms are vicious as all hell. She could defend her way right into a shallow grave if she keeps going.

They have next to no idea of the layout of this place, the local cops won’t get here in time to help even if they could trust them, if they move too slowly Anne could die before they reach her, and if they rush through too quickly they could end up with a dozen men shooting at them and Anne being either used as a hostage or, again, just outright killed. In other words, this is a situation which needs careful handling. That’s not their best skill.

Luckily, fighting their way through large numbers of criminals is.

“Aramis, take the outside, make sure no one slips out. Watch the windows if you can. Get the locals and an ambulance here just in case, but no sirens, got it?”

Aramis nods, already dialling his phone with one hand while trying to keep typing with the other – it looks like he’s pulling up the plans for this building lodged with the city council. He’s the right person to take the outside partly because he can find out where the exits are in time to block them, but also because he’s the best shot out of them all. The rest of them are good shots, especially close up, but from a distance would probably aim for the centre of mass like they’ve been taught – Aramis is completely capable of shooting a fleeing criminal in the leg from distances the rest of them couldn’t hope to match.

“Porthos, d’Artagnan, we’ll take the left side first. Get them on the ground and ziptied, quietly as possible.” They don’t have enough cuffs for this many people, but zipties will work.

“Stun grenades?” d’Artagnan asks.

“No, too risky with this lot. We don’t want them to start shooting up the place blindly. And the noise…”

“Got it.”

And then they’re in. If Anne wasn’t at risk and they were just storming the place like usual, Porthos would easily smash through the door, but this time instead he pulls out his lockpicks and has it open in thirty seconds. Much quieter.

The three men in the first room – a kitchen, but what’s on the stove top doesn’t appear to be dinner – go wide-eyed as they turn to find three loaded guns pointed at them.

“If you make any noise that alerts the rest of this building, we will view it as you trying to get us shot,” Athos says, quietly but clearly.

“We take that kind of thing personally,” Porthos adds, just as quietly, gun at the closest man’s head. “All of you, on the ground, face down, hands behind your backs.”

Porthos turns off the stove as the men obey, and d’Artagnan and Athos ziptie them quickly.

“Stay down,” Athos tells them. “There are people on the exits. If you try to flee, you’ll be shot down.” They generally try not to shoot people just for drugs crimes, but running from a house where an abducted woman is being held after being ordered not to by the police? Aramis can absolutely shoot them for that, especially if he manages to do it non-lethally.

It turns out Anne might not be the only person there who’s been abducted when they reach the room containing two girls who are far too young to be here. Of course, they could also be like she was once upon a time, working with these men because they don’t have many choices. Athos hesitates, but orders them to the ground and zipties them as well as they cry, apologising under his breath as he does so. They can’t leave wild cards running around the place and it’s safer for them to stay here for the moment, but his heart aches for them, and he’ll make damn sure that what they get after this is over is better than what they have now.

The man with them is high off something and takes a swing at Porthos, who takes him down with brutal, savage satisfaction – Athos might be even more furious and heartbroken than normal at seeing this kind of thing after finding out his ex-wife’s past, but Porthos’s biological family used to be on the other side of the worst kind of this trade, and no one takes this shit more personally than he does. Athos doesn’t think the man’s nose will ever heal, given how it’s spread across his face right now, but the important thing is that he’s out cold and no one’s raised the alarm in response to the quiet sobbing of the girls or the thud of him being knocked out.

The last door is closed. Athos is sure they’ve missed at least one room downstairs because of his insistence on going up as soon as possible (the bug was good enough that they even heard the creak of the stairs as Anne went up them), but Aramis will have to take care of those. If the other cops have arrived by now he’ll have help, but either way, Athos thinks he’ll manage.

He holds his hand up to signal for the others to stop for a second, to see if he can get an idea of what’s happening behind the closed door. He can hear muffled voices.

In the total silence, they can all hear Anne’s clear, cool voice. “But I already have such a lovely token from you.”

He shuts his eyes for half a moment in relief – she’s alright – and then pulls back, gesturing for d’Artagnan to open the door, and then they’re all charging in, and chaos reigns. Porthos takes down one of the men at the door and d’Artagnan goes for the other, leaving Athos free to deal with Sarazin himself.

Milady is sitting at the table, hand clenched around a glass of something, ready to throw it. The slightly greasy, scruffy man from those pictures has a gun pointed at her head, but she uses the distraction of their entry to dive to the floor, and Athos raises his gun at the man and barely resists the temptation to shoot him. “Down,” he barks.

Surprisingly, though, Sarazin reacts. Athos hits the ground as a wild spray of bullets barely misses him, deafening everyone in the enclosed space, and by the time he’s risen again Sarazin is holding Milady off the floor by her hair, yanking her painfully so she’s in front of him, and his gun is pointed at her head. “Let me through, or I’ll shoot her,” he snarls.

“Oh, as if they care,” Milady says, rolling her eyes, though she looks more tired and beaten-up than Athos has ever seen her, and the hair pull looks very uncomfortable. “I’m hardly the best hostage to take, Sarazin.”

She reaches up with one hand and almost casually drives her fingernails hard into the tender webs of skin between his fingers, causing him to yowl and loosen his grip on her hair, his gun skittering a few degrees to the side, and she uses the extra slack to slump down a little, and Athos takes the shot. The bullet strikes Sarazin in his upper arm and tears right through to end up embedded in the wall behind them.

Either the force of it or the pain makes Sarazin fall to his knees, and Milady grabs at his other hand, forcing the gun towards the wall as well as he squeezes the trigger automatically and lets loose the last few bullets in the chamber.

Once again, they’re all deafened by the noise, but Porthos and d’Artagnan have their men down, and Sarazin is wounded, his gun reduced to a useless piece of metal without ammo, so they can take the time necessary to recover. 

“Were you waiting outside the room for me to use a code phrase so you could burst in dramatically?”

“No. Just exceptional timing.”

“So, what, you decided to storm the place before I gave you the go-ahead?” For a second, she looks like she’s considering getting annoyed, but then she gives up with a shrug. “Well, I suppose under the circumstances I can’t really tell you off for that, can I?”

“No,” Athos says again, a bit grimly. D’Artagnan is dealing with the wounded, swearing Sarazin, so he moves forward to check Milady over. Jesus Christ, she really is beat up. He swallows the bile that rises up in his throat. No matter how hard she’s broadcasting smug self-assurance, she looks so young and defenceless like this – dwarfed by that huge coat, her face bruised, cut, and stripped bare of make-up, her hair a curling, knotted mess. It makes him want Sarazin dead even more.

“It’s not nearly as bad as it looks,” she says dismissively as he gently turns her head to examine her swollen cheek. “Unless you’re talking about this coat, in which case it’s worse. I can’t believe so many rabbits – well, toy rabbits I suppose, given this seems to be pure polyester – had to die to make something so terribly ugly.”

She’s right – while she’s covered in bruises and cuts, her eyes are steady and able to focus, and there’s no fresh blood, so it’s not nearly as bad as it could be. Athos glances at Porthos for a second opinion anyway, and the other man shrugs. “Superficial,” he agrees.

“So hurtful,” Milady says. “Oh, right, you mean the injuries. Yes, they’re just bruises, give me a few days or a decent brand of concealer and I’ll be fine. But that tracker was expensive. Do you think Treville will reimburse me?”

“That’s what I like about you,” Porthos says, rolling his eyes. “Always focussing on the important things.”

Athos still has his hand on her chin, and he lets go with extreme reluctance. “You…” he starts to say, then swallows hard. “You nearly…” Words fail him completely, and he just breathes in and out, trying to focus on the fact that she’s still alive. God dammit, she scared the hell out of him. They’re never doing another plan like this, ever again.

“Good shot,” she says to him. If he didn’t know her so well he’d think she was completely unbothered by everything that happened – but something about the feverish glitter to her eyes and the way she keeps talking a little too quickly tells him that she’s a lot more shaken than she’s letting on. “He better not bleed out, though. We need him alive, remember?”

“There should be an ambulance outside by now, along with the local police. We’ll accompany him to the hospital to make sure he doesn’t pull off any kind of disappearing act, though,” Athos says, regaining his words and his composure. “And you’re coming as well to get thoroughly checked out.”

“I don’t need...” she begins.

He stares her down, implacable on this point, and crosses his arms. “Yes. You do.”

“Well, fine, then.” Milady looks down with a put-upon sigh. “If you insist. But first, would one of you idiots find me something else to wear?”

X_X_X_X

“What about infection?” Athos asks the doctor. “Does she need some kind of antibiotics? Just in case.”

“For the hundredth time, I’m _fine_ ,” Milady says, irritated. “I don’t have a concussion, or internal bleeding, or shock, or really anything a strong drink and twelve hours of sleep won’t fix. Stop fussing.”

“If your husband will wait here, we can take you in for that scan,” the doctor says, clearly trying to cut off the bickering session which has managed to last throughout this entire check. 

He gives her a look, and she cuts off her protest with a put-upon sigh and follows without correcting the doctor.

It's hours before they pronounce the all-clear, but Milady does get given a better class of painkillers, so she at least doesn’t seem to consider the trip a total waste. Sarazin’s completely stitched up, covered in bandages, and sleeping off some even stronger painkillers, surrounded by cops. The plan is for at least one of the four of them to stay with him all the time in addition to the uniforms, just in case any of his current guards are crooked. It also means they can start talking to him the moment he wakes up.

“How much did you hear of my little discussion with Sarazin?” she asks him now. Her tone is casual, but her eyes are slightly too wide and intent, so he knows there’s nothing casual about it.

He decides discretion is the better part of valour. “I think we missed most of it. We were somewhat preoccupied saving your life.” It’s even true. They did catch the beginning, though, enough that he heard Sarazin use words he’s used to her before, enough that he wants to go shoot the man a few more times. And maybe himself, just a little.

“Oh,” she says. Relief flashes through her eyes, but quickly fades. “Of course, I suppose you’ll all need to listen to the recording anyway. To get word perfect what he said about Sofia and Francesco, Richelieu, and Rochefort, for the interrogation.”

“Not all of us.” He looks a bit to the side of her. He’s not sure what she’ll see in his eyes if she looks into them, but until he knows how he feels it’s probably best to keep her in ignorance as well. “It might need to be played for the trial, but probably not publicly. And only one of us needs to go through it and make a transcript, pull out the important parts for everyone else to look at.”

There’s a brief pause, and then she says, still in that casual tone, “Porthos should go through it.”

He stares at her. “Porthos?” He feels oddly offended by this. A part of him wants to argue that he’s her husband – well, ex-husband – and surely if anyone should be listening to the secrets of her past, it should be him. But then, he’s not sure he _wants_ to hear what else she said, and it’s not like he has the right to any of her secrets, not after everything.

“Well, Aramis will be busy trying to break into Sarazin’s laptop, you’ll be talking to Treville, and I think d’Artagnan has first shift watching Sarazin, doesn’t he?” she says so reasonably that if he didn’t know her, he’d almost believe that was the reason.

“And you’ll be busy having a strong drink and sleeping for twelve hours, I think you said, so you can’t do it.”

“Also – and I can see how this would slip your mind, but bear with me Athos – I’m not actually a cop,” she says with exaggerated patience. “I can’t do _all_ the work for you lot. But yes, twelve hours’ sleep does sound delightful.”

“You can even get your own hotel now,” he observes. “With your own bank cards.”

“Not right away, it’ll take a while for news of Sarazin’s arrest to spread.” She gives another faint, put-upon sigh. “Not to mention no one’s unfrozen my accounts yet. I’m not going back to Hotel Roofie, so I think I’ll have to go wrangle some more departmental money from Treville. Maybe if I threaten to nap in his office he’ll sort it out quicker.”

“You can stay at mine,” he says, because he’s an idiot.

She raises an eyebrow at him, and steps closer, reaching up to playfully tug at the top of the bulletproof vest he has yet to take off. Her closeness sends a shiver of need through him that’s completely inappropriate given the situation, and he stifles it as best he can. “As much as I appreciate the offer, I’m not in the mood to play doctor with you right now, if you get my meaning.”

“Everyone _always_ gets your meaning. You may as well say ‘nudge nudge wink wink’ every time you speak,” he grumbles half-heartedly. “And I was just saying you can use my bed again, for the moment. I won’t head home for hours yet anyway.” And when he does, he won’t slip into bed beside her. As tempting as the thought is, he’ll stick to the couch until they have a chance to talk about what they’re doing. Not that he’ll be able to sleep anyway with her in the other room.

She shrugs and releases him. “Alright then. At least I can be sure the ‘strong drink’ part is covered. Do you want to give me your keys, or shall I let myself in?”

For some reason, the idea of giving her keys makes him tense. It’s illogical – she can get in regardless, he just invited her to stay at his place, and it’s what he’d do with anyone else. Maybe it’s just that giving her a key reminds him of all those years ago, when it was a gesture of trust, not convenience. He gave her a key at the end of their first date, which began five hours after he met her when she got off work, and ended about sixty-two hours later when she had to return to work again. Of course, they made plans for a second date the moment they would both be free again. Her workday ended at five, he would get back from his shift at eight, and she said she’d wait outside, but he’d said no, it’s chilly, take my spare key and I’ll be back as soon as I can. He’d never asked for the key back.

Of course, he hadn’t needed to: eventually he’d changed the locks.

She’s watching him closely. “I’m not going to get the wrong idea from it, Athos. I’m under no illusions here.” Her lips twist into a smile that somehow combines resignation and mockery. “You feel worried about me, and guilty, and so you’re being nice. It’s not trust, and it’s certainly not – well. It’s not anything besides what it is. And only think how convenient it’ll be to have me in your bed when you get back. Now, will you hand over the keys?”

With her so bruised and tired, he feels like a monster for being so untrusting. She’s wearing an oversize police hoody of his and a pair of d’Artagnan’s old jeans, her hair’s in a messy plait, and her feet are still bare on the cold floors – she looks young, small, defenceless. Amazingly, despite all the disarray and ill-fitting clothing she still looks a little like she’s about to attend a photoshoot designed to show off her tomboy side or something. Few people can make a large bruise on their face look like a deliberate fashion choice, but somehow she’s doing it. And seeing her in his hoody, slender limbs swamped by it, cuddling into the warmth like that… well, he doesn’t want to even think about the emotions that brings up, the way his heart squeezes in his chest, how he knows he won’t be strong enough to wash it right away when she gives it back. She seems… open. Vulnerable.

But her eyes are back to being as hard and brilliant as emeralds as she surveys him, and he’d be lying if he said the thought hadn’t crossed his mind that her apparent vulnerability is a deliberate ploy to gain sympathy. He hated himself the moment he thought it, because it’s absurd given everything that’s happened tonight, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t still occur to him. She’s lied too often for him to trust her. He still hasn’t recovered from the last time he opened himself up to her.

It’s a depressing little loop he’s stuck in: he wants to trust her. He can never trust her. He wants her anyway. Which makes him, once again, want to trust her. When he tries to, she proves him wrong in some way almost before he can even really make the attempt – whether with an insult, or a lie, or a betrayal, she always finds a way to make him feel like a fool for even trying.

Now he knows the reasoning behind some of the lies she told him years ago, and that’s made his anger fade a little, helped with his hurt and wounded pride. But it hasn’t done anything for his trust, because she will always be the woman who two-timed him with his brother, who moved in with his partner to torture him, who happily went to work for a cold, immoral bastard like Richelieu, who ruined dozens of their cases just for spite and a paycheck, and who came very close to having them suspended or fired with her games less than a fortnight ago. Trust comes from feeling as much as from logic, and both his heart and his common sense are in agreement on this one point. She can’t be trusted. It’s not worth the risk. Forgiveness might be on the table, he’d like to try for it if he can, if only for his own peace of mind, but trust is gone forever.

But then, he strangled her. And here she stands less than a foot from him, wearing his hoody, holding out her hands for the keys to his place, about to go sleep the night in his bed, inviting him to join her later on if he likes. Is trust that easy for her? He doubts it. Maybe the truth is that none of those things signify trust to her, or maybe it’s that she trusts her instincts even if she doesn’t trust him. Or maybe, just like with him, desire wins out over distrust every time. Even if right now it’s just the desire for some rest.

He hands her the keys, and she takes a step forward again so her body’s nearly against his, still the seductress even like this. She braces against his shoulders with both hands and stands on her tiptoes to reach him, since without her usual ridiculously high heels she’s always shorter than he remembers. Then she kisses him slowly on the cheek, before moving her mouth so she can speak quietly into his ear. He almost groans at the feeling of her breath against him as she murmurs, “See now? Was that so hard?”

She slides her hands down his body, and now he does groan at the feeling of her fingers stroking along his sides. “And I promise you I’m _very_ grateful,” she adds, and licks a very slow stripe up his neck, ending at his earlobe. The slow burn of lust is immediately replaced by a flash of heat so powerful it leaves him unsteady on his feet.

This is incredibly inappropriate behaviour given their location, and if she keeps going it’s going to escalate into even more embarrassment, since he can already feel himself hardening. As politely as he can, he steps back, detaching from her and trying to think about unsexy things – very difficult when she’s that close and looking so smug. With a satisfied smile, suddenly not looking the slightest bit vulnerable, she turns to leave.

“How are you going to get there?” he asks, it suddenly occurring to him. “I can get one of the uniforms to drive you. Or if you want to take a taxi, I can lend you -” 

She turns and walks backwards for a few steps as she replies, “I think I’ll be fine.” With a little bit of malicious amusement, she tosses his wallet back to him. His wallet that was stuffed in his pants pocket. His wallet that is no doubt empty of any cash at all now, and possibly his credit cards as well. Well, that explains the kiss, anyway.

“What about my phone?” he says, checking his pocket and finding that missing as well.

She shrugs. “You have mine. And you won’t give it back now that it’s got evidence on it. Don’t you want some way to contact me?”

He sighs, deciding not to even bother arguing about this. “Just… go.”

It occurs to him as soon as she’s gone that she could have just taken his keys when she picked his pockets. But then, as she’d pointed out herself, she’d never needed keys to get into his place. She must just have been testing him. He wonders if he passed or failed.

X_X_X_X

It’s still d’Artagnan’s shift when Sarazin wakes up.

D’Artagnan often reminds himself that however charming a criminal is, they’re still a criminal. It stops him from sympathising with them. But in Sarazin’s case, he doesn’t need the reminder. He’s seen and heard enough that he’s in no danger of forgetting what the man is.

“Where am I?” Sarazin slurs, squinting around the hospital room suspiciously.

“Police custody,” d’Artagnan tells him with a certain amount of self-satisfaction. He pulls out his phone and texts the others. He knows Athos at least will be awake, probably brooding, but Aramis and Porthos might have gone home already. After finishing the text, he clicks on the recording function on his phone. Sarazin’s lawyer can probably claim that anything he says now is from the influence of the drugs they gave him, but that doesn’t mean it won’t help to sway a jury, and it definitely doesn’t mean he won’t give up some information they might need.

Truth be told, they have more than enough to put him away. The house was a veritable cornucopia of evidence against him, his police file is probably as tall as he is by now, they have the testimony of eleven men, two girls, and Milady, and they have a recording of him admitting to attempted murder and kidnapping. The problem isn’t evidence, it’s timing – once he gets a lawyer, the first thing they’ll say is not to talk, that any information he gives is likely to be used against him later. And they’ll be right. 

The DA’s office might be willing to offer him a deal in return for information, but it’s not guaranteed. Given the sheer number and severity of his crimes, they probably won’t want to let him off the hook for even a few years. Unlike Milady, his crimes are recent, and a lot of them are violent crimes. Besides, from their point of view they’ve already given out one deal, they probably can’t afford to risk another.

All up, it means this might be the only chance they get to talk to him before he lawyers up and goes into self-defence mode. 

“Was grabbing coffee,” Porthos says, entering the room and leaning against the wall. He flashes a grin at d’Artagnan and takes a sip. “Aramis is sleeping and Athos is talking to the Captain, but I’m sure they’ll be here as soon as they can.”

“Bitch shot me,” Sarazin says incredulously, apparently still confused, trying to stare at his own arm. He struggles a little against the cuffs, then gives in with a noise of pain.

“Actually, that was Detective de la Fere,” d’Artagnan says. “You were threatening to kill Mademoiselle de Winter at the time, if you recall.”

“Mademoiselle? Hah! You know what she is?” Sarazin demands, becoming more lucid by the second.

“Got a pretty good idea, yeah,” Porthos says serenely. “Now, we wanted a word with you.”

“Well you can fuck right off.”

“You really want us to add obstructing the police and offensive language to the list of things you’re being charged with?” d’Artagnan asks, raising an eyebrow. Though he supposes compared to the other things on the list, it hardly matters.

“Why don’t you tell us what you know about Richelieu’s murder?” Porthos asks, almost jovially. 

Sarazin glances at him and rolls his eyes. “Wasn’t a murder,” he says, voice oily with saintliness. “Natural causes. Old man died of a heart attack, everyone knows that.”

Old man? D’Artagnan considers pointing out that Sarazin can’t be that much younger than Richelieu, even if he doesn’t have grey hair yet. 

“Nah, they don’t,” Porthos says, quick as a whip. “In fact, cause of his death wasn’t released, so almost no one knows that. So how’d _you_ know it was a heart attack?”

It’s the sort of interrogation method used much more effectively on TV shows than in real life, because most people in real life would just point out that ‘heart attack’ was a reasonable assumption when the papers said ‘passed away peacefully’. But Sarazin’s not exactly in the best place right now for thinking clearly, not with the injury, the drugs, and the stress.

“Heard it from some friends,” Sarazin snaps.

“Sofia Martinez and Francesco Garcia?” Porthos asks. “Those the friends?”

“Get me a fucking lawyer.”

“Yeah, you don’t want that,” Porthos says, holding up a phone. “Know why? Because this phone right here has a recording on it. And this here is your one chance for there to be no recording.” He touches a button on the screen, and Sarazin’s voice comes from it, clear as day: _No power, no leverage, no chance of surviving_.

“Now, we don’t care about you,” d’Artagnan lies. After what he’d heard and seen earlier, he wants the man to fry. But Milady already told them the bugs automatically back up everything recorded online – Porthos could smash the phone to bits in front of Sarazin, and the worst he’d do is make the chain of evidence a bit more dodgy. The recording would still be fine. “We’re after Sofia and Francesco – and not even for their old jobs, the ones you might know something about, but for the most recent. The one you obviously had nothing to do with.”

“All we want is their location, maybe how to contact them,” Porthos picks it up smoothly. “Nothing that implicates you. Hell, d’Artagnan will turn off his phone as well, no one will even know you gave it to us. And then that recording goes away. The rest of the stuff? Yeah, pretty incriminating, but no one can prove attempted murder based on it.” 

“Choose a guy out of your crew and explain it was all him,” d’Artagnan suggests helpfully. “You’re a nice fellow, with a nice house, probably a pillar of the community. Not your fault if someone was threatening you or taking advantage of you. You just got mixed up in something bigger, panicked.”

“Other guys aren’t gonna be too keen to spill their guts when it’ll incriminate them as well, too,” Porthos continues. “Milady de Winter, well, you said yourself, you know what she is – could be a jury won’t believe whatever she has to say. But this here? Makes you look pretty fucking unsympathetic. Jury hears that, they’re gonna think you’re a monster, instead of a nice guy.”

He might not fall for it if he was clear-headed, but he’s not. D’Artagnan watches, concealing his nerves, as Sarazin stares at the phone like it’s an unexploded bomb. Finally, he snaps, “They’re in Spain, okay, that’s all I know. Only way to contact them is by secure email, routed through a few places, untraceable. Need a code word as well, to show you’re trustworthy.”

“Gonna need details,” Porthos says.

“Gonna need to delete that first,” Sarazin says, just as sharp. “Then I’ll tell you.”

There’s a pause while they all stare at each other, and then Porthos shrugs as it becomes clear Sarazin’s not backing down. He presses a few buttons.

Sarazin lets out a bitter cackle of laughter the second Porthos deletes it, the action apparently confirming something for him. “Did that much too quickly, you did. Not gone, is it? I know when I’m being played. You can fuck right off. You got nothing from me. Now, I want my lawyer. Make me ask again and I’ll have a real complaint to make against you.”

They have to follow the rules, unfortunately. “Do you think he was at least telling the truth about the email address?” d’Artagnan asks Porthos quietly after they’ve given in and let him call the lawyer.

“Yeah, I do. Maybe that code word shit as well. Reeled that off way too quick. If he is, I reckon Aramis can find it on his laptop. Might take him a while, but he will.”

They’re finally getting somewhere. Thank fucking Christ.


	11. Counter Offer

Porthos closes his eyes, partly to hear better, and partly because he hasn’t gotten nearly enough sleep and his eyes feel dry and itchy. Apart from when they’re keeping an eye on Sarazin at the hospital, they’ve all gone home and grabbed some shut eye, even Athos, but it doesn’t feel like enough. The past couple of weeks have been hectic and bizarre, and he’s beginning to suspect that won’t end until they deal with Rochefort. God knows none of them will feel quite safe at the station until he’s behind bars.

Aramis is next to him, alternating between typing away furiously at Sarazin’s computer and spending long periods of time just staring in blank hopelessness at the screen. It’s his process. D’Artagnan’s off with Constance apologising for his lack of spare time recently, Athos is going through Sarazin’s house and accounts to round up even more evidence to add to the pile, and Porthos is playing the recording for the twentieth time to make sure his transcript is perfect.

It’s uncomfortable to listen to. From the sound of it, kid Milady was in pretty much the same situation he was back then, except without people like Flea and Charon to have her back. Just like her, he got caught stealing. But unlike Sarazin, the man who caught him was a good man, even though he was a cop, and he’d wanted to help Porthos, wanted to give him a real chance. He’ll always owe Treville for that. All the lost kids get found eventually in some way, but what matters is who finds them, whether they want to help them or just use them. If it’d been someone like Sarazin who looked at him and saw potential, instead of the Captain, who knows where Porthos could be today. Not here, that’s for sure. Probably in prison or dead.

Anyway. He doesn’t like it, for all that Milady holds her own in the conversation. 

He wonders how much of it Athos knows, how much more than what’s on here there is still to know.

“Ah ha!” Aramis grins at him, stretches his arms above his head in a very self-satisfied way. “Porthos, my friend, I’m a genius.”

Porthos pulls out his earphones. “You got into his email?”

“Yep,” Aramis says. “I did. You know, you wouldn’t think a man with no compunction about hiring sex workers would need accounts on this many porn sites. The computer should be nearly as diseased as him at this point.” He pauses, suddenly horrified. “My God, I should have cleaned this keyboard much more thoroughly before touching it. And maybe the screen as well.”

“Thanks for that disgusting thought. Sofia and Francesco?”

“Nothing by either of those names. But if Milady can tell us when the two assassinations she knows of happened, we should be able to narrow it down quickly. It looks like he’s had this email address basically since the internet was invented.”

“Yeah, but they might have changed theirs,” Porthos points out.

“But once we find one email, we’ll know the code word or phrase, and we can find the rest based on that.” Aramis beams. “We’re finally getting somewhere. Do you know when Milady’s planning to join us again?”

“Not a clue. At this point, I’m not ruling out the possibility that she’s gone to have a spa day.”

X_X_X_X

She’s not at a spa, but she is in her old offices. It’s probably a bad idea, but she needs to think, and Armand Richelieu was the smartest man she knew – she can’t help hoping that being in the offices they shared will help her tap into that intelligence, as if some part of him might linger in the air.

Does she feel guilty that he died without her even realising he’d been murdered? Well, maybe. She couldn’t have stopped it, but it was her job to always be one step ahead, and apparently here she was one step behind. She’s not entirely sure what to do next to get to the end she wants – her free, rich, able to go wherever she wants – and she thinks somehow he would know exactly what to suggest. She’s also confused on a personal level, but that definitely wasn’t Armand’s wheelhouse, so he could hardly have provided advice on that front. He’d managed his own personal life terribly. His strange on-off relationship with Adele was generally at its best when there was nothing but dishonesty between them.

She wonders if that’s the case with her and Athos’s relationship as well.

Milady had been woken up this morning by the pain in her face, legs, arms, neck – basically everywhere. She’s had enough injuries to know they’re mostly surface, painful without being long-lasting. The pain is more from exhaustion and sore muscles than anything else. Another couple of days and she’ll be back to normal, apart from some colourfully healing bruises and cuts.

Sometimes, she thinks she almost takes a savage enjoyment in bruises, the same way she does scars: physical proof something happened, _I was there, I did that, this was done to me_. She’s had a lot of names and been a lot of places, but the scar on her throat is a constant, even if she often hates it. She wore the necklace of bruises Athos gave her for a while after he was gone, and that was a strange comfort as well, even if it was only the comfort of anger. Scars stay. Everything else shifts. These bruises will too in a week or so, but until then, she can admire the way they flower and then fade, patterning her skin. It’s a silly thought, but it makes her think of a poisonous plant or a venomous creature, displaying bright colours to prove how dangerous they are. The bruises remind her of how much she can survive. 

Regardless, today, they woke her, made her groan even as she stretched. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was water and painkillers next to the bed, presumably left there by Athos, who was nowhere to be seen. The sweet little gesture had made her happy and sad at the same time.

It turned out Athos was on the couch. After the last, somewhat violent night of passion they spent together, she can’t decide if the return to chivalry is ironic, hypocritical, or an attempt at some sort of atonement, but it hardly matters. It’s years since she last saw him sleeping – on both the night she spent at his place, and the night he spent at her temporary hotel, he was the one to wake up first. He always looks so defenceless in sleep. She can remember when she used to wake up every morning and look over at him, pillow creases pressed into his skin, face slack and peaceful as he dreamt. It made her heart twist in her chest, every time. She remembers how she used to think _I’m so lucky to have him, how do I keep him?_ and _Do I really deserve this?_ Maybe those are the thoughts everyone has when they look at someone they love.

And she’d looked at him this morning, still sleepy and with those painkillers kicking in, and the same thoughts had floated automatically through her mind, mouth curving into a contented smile.

Of course, that meant she’d immediately needed to flee, before she could think anything else that unnerving. She’d stuck around long enough to make sure she looked great – after that horrible coat, she’s recommitted to her life choice of wearing only the best clothes – but as soon as possible she was on her way.

What the hell are they doing? Don’t they hate each other? Or shouldn’t they, at least? The man strangled her. She screwed his brother. He left her homeless. She lied about her past. They’ve got mountains of baggage in between them, an unsolved murder case to distract them, a future that probably contains jail or fleeing for her and hunting her down for him, and a mixture of half-crazed lust and anger sizzling through them whenever they’re in the same room, yet it’s the feelings she thought they left behind five years ago that occupy her thoughts.

She doesn’t have him anymore, and there’s no way on earth she can keep him. Whether she deserves him or not is beside the point – she’s no better a person now than she was five years ago, in fact she’s probably slipped a few more notches down any wholly imaginary morality scale, but it’s not like he’s as squeaky clean as he once was either. The important thing is that there’s no way to fix things, to get back to where they were. She knows that. She’s sure he knows that as well. So why is she sleeping in his bed, even for a night, even if it’s without him? Why does she know she’ll go back there tonight and pick up that ‘unfinished business’ they keep talking about? She’s accustomed to sex having a price, but she’s not normally the one to pay it, and the price being her emotional distance and peace of mind terrifies her.

She loves him. She’s fairly sure he also loves her, but he doesn’t seem to be aware of that – he’s trying so hard not to be in love with her, after all. Neither of those things matter, though. Feelings are unimportant if they can’t be turned to action, and in this case, they can’t. And it’s not like love is the only feeling she has for him, or even that the love she feels is especially healthy.

The office is very empty. Armand always liked it like that, all echoing space, bare walls and floor. It intimidated people, he said. In the five years she worked for him, she never so much as brought a vase of flowers in to brighten up the place, and it occurs to her now she still doesn’t know how he would have reacted if she had. They were very close in some ways – she spent a lot of her time with him, they were always working to the same aims, they had a similar sense of humour and outlook on life, and they understood each other as only two people cut from the same cloth can. But while she knows he could care about people – there was no reason to have either Adele or Francois the cat in his life if he didn’t – she has no idea if he cared about her. She was useful to him, and he valued that usefulness. Beyond that, did she matter? Of course, that works the other way around as well – he was useful to her as well, and she valued that use, and she _still_ doesn’t know how much she cared about him outside that.

Wonderful. One of the few real relationships in her life, and she doesn’t even know how real it was. Isn’t that just fucking typical.

After the divorce, when she finally managed to get her hands on some cash and made her way to the city, she told herself she was leaving everything that happened in Pinon behind her forever. Except then she’d gone straight to Armand, and looking back now, she’s not sure what compelled her to do so. Perhaps it was that everyone else involved in the disaster had their lives ruined in some way, even Thomas, while Armand had gotten off scot-free, indifferent and professional, completely unaffected except for the hefty fee he received from Thomas for the information about her. She hadn’t wanted revenge for that, though. Instead, she’d wanted to learn from it. She wanted to be like that, cool and detached, able to ruin or fix lives with her actions while never becoming involved with those lives. And since Richelieu knew her past, and he found it impressive, he’d agreed that she was just the kind of employee he could use, and he was willing to provide papers and protection in return for that. He found the signing bonus she requested in return for a five-year contract entertaining, as well, and so Thomas d’Athos will never be a politician now. If he tries, he’ll be disbarred, disgraced, and probably divorced, what with the information Armand helped her to gather on him. Sometimes she thinks that’s justice, but other times she thinks maybe she should just have gone the Francesco-and-Sofia route with him.

Anne de Breuil could never have become Milady de Winter without the help of Armand Richelieu, and at the time, she needed to be someone new, at least in part. Milady de Winter was cold, malicious and treacherous, because that was better than being heartbroken and wracked with guilt and pain. Richelieu helped her, even if it was for selfish reasons. He gave her strength, and new skills, and contacts, and cunning. Five years ago she would never have been able to deal with Sarazin. Now she’s done it. And now he’s dead.

“I can’t believe Sofia and Francesco got you,” she says to the air, just on the off chance Armand was right and there is some kind of afterlife. She’s not a believer, but he was. “Wherever you are, I hope you’re suitably embarrassed by that. I’ll make sure they end up in jail for it, but don’t take that to mean anything. At this point, I think I’ve just become used to doing all the legwork here.”

It’s an appropriately emotional speech, she decides. Too emotional, even – Armand would probably have frowned at her for it. With a sigh, she turns and leaves.

The others are still at the café in the hospital, drinking terrible coffee and looking exhausted. When she breezes in with an expensive to-go cup, with her hair and make-up on point (almost concealing her bruises, even) and in her flattering designer dress, Aramis gives her a look with more annoyance than appreciation in it. 

“Where have you been?”

“Getting a manicure,” she says brightly, because she might have given in to rank sentimentality, but she’s damned if she’ll admit to it. “The last colour was unflattering to my skin tone. How’s everything going? Wrung the information out of Sarazin yet?”

“He lawyered up,” Aramis informs her.

“Of course he did. Weren’t you supposed to stop him doing that?”

“Hard to break the rules with a dozen uniforms around you,” Porthos grumbles. “But get this – we got into his email.”

“ _We_?” Aramis asks.

“Really? You’re that desperate for validation?”

“No, no. It’s fine. Feel free to bask in the unearned credit.” Aramis shakes his head. “True geniuses are always unappreciated.”

“But the unappreciated aren’t always geniuses.”

“Do you two need to see a couple’s counsellor?” Milady wonders.

“You are _not_ the right person to be suggesting that,” Aramis says, with slightly hurtful accuracy. “Now come over here and help me find Francesco and Sophia.”

It takes less than ten minutes. The code word turns out to be ‘princess’, which makes every email seem extremely creepy, but at least it’s not anything more complicated.

“So, what should we email them?” Aramis wonders brightly. “Do you think if we ask for holiday pics they’ll send us photos of their exact locations?”

“I thought we were just gonna hire them to kill someone,” Porthos says. When the others look at him, he shrugs. “Hey, it’s the easiest way to get them here. Not you, this time, though,” he says nicely to Milady.

She sniffs. “I’d be an amazing assassination target. But you’re right, not me. We need a job that makes them want to come back into the country.”

“So firstly, it needs to be well-paid,” Aramis says. “Extremely well-paid.”

“Yes, but also easy,” Milady says. “They’re not going to want to risk another difficult job so soon after killing Armand fucking Richelieu, I mean, my God, they probably used up their luck for _years_. Francois is a black cat, as well, so that probably didn’t help.”

“Athos? We could hire them to kill Athos,” Aramis suggests, probably because Athos isn’t here to object.

“Suspicious to pay that much to kill off a policeman,” Milady notes. Also, she wouldn’t call him exactly easy to kill. She could do it, but hopefully he’s a bit more careful with other people.

“Treville?”

“In a normal month, maybe, but not so soon after Richelieu,” Milady says. “It needs to be someone _extremely_ important, and therefore _extremely_ expensive.”

“One minor problem with the plan of hiring them for an expensive job,” Porthos starts to say.

“Your plan, you mean?”

“Shut up,” Porthos says. “The one problem being that in all these other emails, they got paid half up front. I don’t suppose Treville’s likely to be able to get us that kind of money.”

“No,” Aramis admits. “Milady?”

“I don’t keep that kind of sum in cash, and I don’t think we have time for me to sell any of my investment properties,” she says, and pauses for a moment to marvel at how wealthy she’s become over the past half a decade. Armand Richelieu paid _extremely_ well. “No, we need our important person to be rich as well – there’s normally a lot of crossover there – and to contribute to this plan.”

Aramis laughs. “Where are we going to find someone extremely important, very easy to kill, richer than Croesus, and stupid enough to help pay for their own potential assassination?”

There’s a pause, where Milady raises an eyebrow, and Porthos grins, and then Aramis works it out. He closes his eyes and lets his face rest on his palms. “Louis de Bourbon?” he says, voice muffled.

“Louis de Bourbon,” Porthos confirms.

X_X_X_X

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

They stare at each other in total silence for an apparently unending minute, but eventually she’s the one to break it. With an exaggerated sigh, Milady throws her handbag down next to his front door and says bluntly, “It’s a good idea.”

“What’s a good idea?” he asks, already lost.

“Oh. You aren’t mad at me about the Louis thing?”

“What Louis thing?”

She studies him for a moment. “Oh, I see. Uh, nothing. We can talk about it tomorrow.”

He closes his eyes. “Are you still seeing Louis de Bourbon?” It’s not any of his business if she is, he reminds himself. He’s not her boyfriend, he’s not her spouse, he’s not even her lover, he’s her ex-husband. She can date anyone she wants. So long as Louis is separated from Ana, he doesn’t even have a moral reason to be angry at her. He should be just fine with her doing whatever she wants to with Louis de Bourbon.

He’s going to have to come up with some reason to arrest Louis de Bourbon.

“No, I’m not,” she says. “In fact, he’s not even speaking to me. Treville’s going to have be the one to talk him into getting assassinated, since unfortunately, I think the memory of his father will be a better card to play than the prospect of getting to see all my bruises.” She blinks, reviews her words, and seems to realise that he’s lacking some context here. “Really, can we talk about this tomorrow? I was under the impression we had other – business – to attend to tonight.”

Her dress is tight, short, and highly distracting, emphasising every curve of her body. She straightens the clingy fabric now with a teasing little pull, revealing an extra triangle of creamy flesh as the neckline dips even further. He immediately wants to tear the whole thing off her but he restrains himself. Well, to a point. He still finds his eyes drawn irresistibly to the additional curves of her breasts revealed by just that one little tug.

“We should talk,” he manages to choke out.

“Should we?” She raises an eyebrow. “Right now? I’m all for getting closure, Athos, but foreplay doesn’t usually last five days.”

He nearly asks _what about five years?_ but stops himself just in time. “I think we just need to be clear about what this is, and what it’s not.”

“Alright, then. If we manage to get Rochefort, then I’m leaving the country and I’m not coming back. Is that clear enough?”

The shock very nearly leaves him gaping at her. He had things to say, lots of clever things, the right things, reasonable things, and suddenly she’s pre-empted them. “What?” It comes out not just plaintive, but almost offended. She can’t _leave_ , it’s absurd. She’s part of the warp and weft of his life, woven in so securely there’s no way to cut her out. They may not have spent any time together in the past five years, but he knew she was around, he sensed it in the way his neck prickled sometimes, in the scent of jasmine that always made his head whip around. And over the past few weeks he’s gotten used to her being within arguing distance most of the day – it’s not always pleasant, obviously, but it’s a damn sight better than her not being around. He has the strange fear that her being in another country won’t just stretch the bond between them to uncomfortable levels, but snap it entirely. She’ll be _gone_.

She rolls her eyes, seeming not to care about his response, just about his slowness. “Athos, if this deal doesn’t work out, I go to jail – if you can manage to get me there, anyway. But even if everything goes perfectly, I’m not staying here. If I stayed, I’d need to all but start the business from scratch again, since Rochefort destroyed all the files. Given the number of bridges I’ve burned, some of them quite important bridges, that doesn’t seem worth it to me. It’s time for me to move on. Sarazin’s dealt with, Richelieu’s dead, and whatever we had is long over. Don’t pretend it won’t be a relief to see me go.”

She seems completely unconcerned by this – _too_ unconcerned, he can’t help thinking, for it not to be at least partially an act. But her words seem genuine enough.

“So you’ll just… go,” he says, a bit stupidly. He tries to gather himself. “Where?”

“Wherever.” She shrugs. “England, perhaps. I’ve been there a few times doing work for Richelieu – there are some people there who I could call in favours with. Anyway, the important point is that I’m not likely to get the wrong idea. This is fucking. It’s temporary. We’re not working out our issues, we’re not becoming closer, we’re just enjoying each other’s company, preferably nude.”

“I just wanted to make sure we were both on the same page,” he says, clearing his throat, still feeling unreasonably like she’s struck him. He goes back to what he meant to say originally, as if he’s trying to force this conversation back into a groove it already leapt out of. “There’s too much between us for anything to happen. We need to move on, we need space. We can’t get confused.”

“I’m not confused. Bed, floor, desk, counter? Where works for you?” She starts playing with the hem of her dress again, a wicked smirk curving her lips. Her gaze is hot on him. “We can do it wherever you want. And _whatever_ you want, within reason. You know my rules. It seems silly to work our way up to things when we have such limited time. You have handcuffs somewhere nearby, right? Probably not any other toys, but we can improvise.”

He feels dizzy. He’s fairly sure all the blood has left his brain. Half of his mind’s still stuck on what she was saying before, and the other half is on fire with all the images her offer is provoking. And the way she’s smirking at him isn’t helping. He wants nothing more than to be kissing her, to be touching her, to be inside her, and the idea of her leaving only makes that craving worse, unearthing possessiveness he has no right to feel. It’s not anger, though, not like the other night – he doubts that feeling is permanently gone, but right now he’s been too worried about her to be really angry, and apparently if he can keep the rage buried for a few more weeks he’ll never have to worry about it again. The thought causes a surge of fear that only strengthens his lust.

“Well? Where would you like -”

“Wherever’s closest,” he chokes out, and pushes her back against the pillar in the centre of his apartment. He buries one hand in her hair to pull her head to the perfect angle for him to ravage her mouth, all but attacking her tongue with his, and she makes a little, needy whine in the back of her throat that goes straight to his groin. His other hand ends up on her ass, squeezing and groping.

The kiss is hot and unstoppable and quickly becomes extremely dirty, both of them rubbing against each other like animals in heat, both of them groaning and moaning and clutching and gasping, hair mussed, clothes being pushed up or down or open, lips red and bitten and eyes wild. He manages to pull back for a moment to gasp out, “Dress -”

“Zipper,” she replies once his frantic tugging makes it clear what he means, and she turns around to press her flushed face against the pillar. He yanks the zipper down her upper body, kiss and licking and rubbing his face against every new piece of skin that appears, moving down the line of her spine and to her waist. Then he returns his mouth to her neck (but not to her scar, not without permission, not after everything) to nip and suck at the spot that makes her jolt again, feeling her pulse jump in response and her breathing go ragged. He can’t stop touching her, cupping the perfect globes of her ass in that black lingerie, scraping his fingers along her thighs. By then she’s even more flushed, pushing back against him, moaning, little whines erupting from her throat as he touches her.

“How did you even put that dress on?” The thought was floating somewhere within the mess of red hot lust that’s conquered all his higher reasoning skills, and he’s as surprised as she is that it came out of his mouth.

She glances back over her shoulder, lips still red from his, eyes black with lust, but manages to pull together a smirk somehow. “I’m very flexible.”

Fuck, he can remember that much. 

He unhooks her bra and she leans back against him to pull it down her arms, and his hands are drawn to her now bare breasts as if magnetised. With her braced against the pillar, facing it, and him bracketing her from behind, he can see the upper curves of her breasts, how they heave with each too-quick breath she takes. He can watch himself touching them as well over her shoulder, his calloused hands against the perfect smoothness of her, watch her nipples tightening as he cups them, feels the weight of them, pinches and strokes. She grabs one of his hands and tugs it up to her mouth, sucking on the tips of his fingers – the heat of her mouth and the insistent sucking making him dizzy – before releasing it and giving him a smirk that looks almost manic. He takes the hint and tweaks her nipple with his now-wet fingers, wetting it as well, forcing it to further stiffness, and does the same with the other, both of his hands teasing and toying until his touch makes her almost sob with want.

He’s been grinding against her ass for a while now as he does this, getting harder and harder. She’s still wearing tiny black panties, more decoration than covering, and below that sheer stockings and high heels of the same overly-pointy variety she wore to the ball. The memory of her talking about fantasies makes him grind against her harder and she lets out a broken moan and he can’t stop himself from reaching his hand around to her front and delving his fingers inside her, thumb rubbing against her clit, sliding slickly, driving her steadily more insane. He loves exploring her from the inside, loves the way her cunt clenches around his fingers, the places he finds that make her quake, jerk, shake against him, the breathy little moans and whimpers he can pull from her.

“Enough,” she manages to gasp out after a minute, pulling away from the sensation and pulling his hand away at the same time, and she twists around and grabs the front of his shirt, yanks him around so that he’s got his back against the pillar now, and forces his shirt up over his head. He helps with it, and while he’s struggling his way out of the shirt, she pulls down her panties and steps out of them so she’s only wearing stockings and heels, and then starts work on his pants. Once his shirt is gone she fastens her mouth on his again, kissing him so desperately his mouth stings with the force of it, biting at his lower lip.

“Fuck,” he groans as her slender fingers reach in to wrap around his cock, thumb ghosting over the crown. She chokes out a smug laugh against his mouth, giving him a few light pumps that turn his cock from hard to aching. She releases him for a moment as he pulls down his own pants to step out of them, and then suddenly he knows exactly where he wants her, and before she can take hold of him again he walks her backwards to the nearby counter, never breaking the rough, messy kiss. When she’s pressed against it, she obeys the urging of his hands and turns, bare, sweaty skin sliding against his as she does so, so she can bend over the counter, right where he wants her. 

He rubs mindlessly against her, hands coming to rest on her hips again, but this time from behind. With these heels on she’s the perfect height to fuck from behind like this, and she’ll still have enough purchase to push back against him, but he forces himself to pull back for a moment just to take in the sight of her – the perfect, luscious curves of her ass, her spread legs impossibly long and still covered in sheer stockings, her dripping cunt on display for his hungry eyes. Unable to stop himself, he pushes two fingers back deep inside her, still wet from earlier, to her very vocal, whimpering approval. He thrusts and twists them, forcing little noises of surprise and need from her throat, enjoying the obscene, wet little noises every movement makes as she writhes against him and the cold counter. But he can’t hold out long, not with her spread open like that, perfectly angled for him to push home into all that wet clenching heat.

He spreads her further from behind, then fists himself, lines up again and pushes himself into her. Her ragged gasps and pleading spur him to lose his self-control slightly and with a groan he slams in harder than he meant to, no longer able to move slowly when she’s already begging him shamelessly to fuck her faster. He pulls out a little way then thrusts his cock hard and deep into her cunt, starting up a rough, wild rhythm.

She shrieks and sobs at the feeling of it, scrabbling uselessly at the flat surface of the counter, apparently desperate for anything to cling to. She tries to push back against him, forcing him deeper inside her, harder, faster. He obliges because he no longer has the willpower to resist, pounding into her at a frenetic pace, half-crazed with lust and pleasure, delirious with need. With his spare hand he pulls at the curve of her ass, spreading her so he can see his cock entering her dripping cunt again and again, the wet, obscene sight of her contracting around him.

Her hoarse cries of pleasure as she comes set him off as well, making his vision go white and spotty and the air turn too thin, making all of his restraint disappear until he’s pounding deeply into her, animalistic and desperate, and she writhes against him, pushing back, just as out of control.

He’s barely able to breath by the time it’s over and he pulls away, breathless and boneless, but he already knows he hasn’t had his fill of her. Maybe he never will. Maybe that’s why the idea of her leaving skewers him so painfully. Whatever the reason, although he should be done for a little while at least, his cock is already starting to stir again, almost painful in its sensitivity, just at the idea of burying himself inside her once more, just at the feel of her sweat-slick skin and the sound of her panting.

He pulls her head around and kisses her while still pressed against her, nothing chaste in it, invading her mouth lewdly and almost clumsily in his need, both of them still fighting to get their breath back, teeth clacking, sweat making them slippery, nails scraping against skin.

He has an active imagination and he’s spent five straight years with only his hand for company, so maybe it’s not that surprising his mind is already filling with thoughts of how to take her next. They’ve done a lot of things together, ranging from completely vanilla to quite kinky – if they have limited time, there’s no way to get through everything, let alone attempt new activities, but he’d much rather focus on an imaginary sexual bucket list than analyse too closely why thinking of her leaving fills him with total panic.

From the gleam in her eyes as she twists around so they’re chest to chest again, she has a few very similar ideas to his own, and his dick hardens a little painfully as she drags a pointed heel down the back of his calf, scratching the fingernails of one hand down his back to his ass at the same time.

“Bed?” he asks breathlessly.

“Floor,” she gasps out instead, just as breathless, “Closer,” and she pulls him down to it.

X_X_X_X

When she wakes, there’s a warm hollow in the bed beside her, but no one’s filling it.

For a moment she thinks he’s left, but it’s his apartment, so that makes no sense. She can hear the sound of someone moving around in the kitchen – a kettle boiling, the clink of mugs and bowls being moved around, cupboards being opened and closed. The smell of toast and coffee. Smiling to herself, she pads soundlessly to the kitchen doorway to watch him, pulling on his shirt because it’s the nearest item of clothing (and not at all because it smells like him).

Their discussion last night was all about moving on, so she has no idea what he thinks he’s doing right now, but she remembers this. When they were married, he would try and make breakfast for her whenever he woke up first and didn’t have an early shift. He was useless at cooking, having grown up with a cook and spent most of his adult years living off coffee and take-out, but he could just about manage breakfast. For a given value of breakfast, anyway. She got used to burnt toast, oddly runny and misshapen instant pancakes, cooked eggs with little missed bits of shell, and strangely rubbery bacon – after all, she’d lived off far worse food before, and there was something so heartwarming about how intently he tried.

He’s wearing nothing but trackpants, and she can’t help but enjoy the view as he moves around the place. She’s feeling indolent, completely satisfied, but there’s no denying it’s a nice sight to wake up to, even without the breakfast. The broadness of his chest, the corded muscles in his back, the sinew and flex of his arms. She’s mouthed and kissed and tongued and scraped her teeth over every square inch of it, but she thinks lazily that she’d quite like to refresh her memory of the taste of it again.

As she watches, he lets out a quiet “Fuck” as he drops an egg on the floor, and she stifles a laugh.

“What’re you up to, Athos?” she says, eyes lit up with unholy amusement. “And please don’t say ‘cooking’.”

“It’s difficult,” he says defensively, but she can see the gleam of amusement in his eyes as well as he starts to clean up the egg. “But the toast worked. I wouldn’t risk the eggs, to be honest, but the toast should be fine. And the bacon.”

“That’s my favourite anyway,” she says. After last night’s exertions, she’s starving. She wonders if it counts as breakfast – it must be midday by now, surely. And then she wonders what his friends are making of their disappearance. They haven’t exactly been doing days off lately, after all.

He watches her as she makes up a plate, in between cleaning up spilled ingredients, and she resists the urge to kiss his cheek as thanks – now that really would be confusing. Why does he think stuff like this is a good idea? Doesn’t he realise he’s sending mixed messages? It’s a good thing she knows him too well to be confused by it, but anyone else would be mystified by his behaviour.

Instead of sitting at the table, she boosts herself up on the nearby counter to eat, plate sitting beside her, and sees his eyes slide half-shut as he remembers exactly what they were doing at that spot last night. The fact she’s only wearing a long shirt probably helps.

“Are you going to tell me about the plan you have that involves Louis now?” he says eventually.

“It’s not entirely my plan,” she says, slightly evasively – alright, extremely evasively. “If anything, I’d say I’m more of a godparent to the plan, really, and Aramis and Porthos are the parents. Definitely their brainchild. Could you pass the butter?”

He just looks at her, waiting.

She hopes the looming argument doesn’t ruin her glow from last night (well, and yesterday afternoon… they started quite early). And it is a pretty amazing glow. The ache of remembered pleasure is so all-encompassing she can barely feel her bruises anymore. He’s the only lover she’s ever had who seems to know exactly what she wants and needs every time they come together. She knows he enjoys every moment just as much as she does, craves every touch and kiss in fact, and that just makes it even better. She’s not even sure that it’s that their desires match so much as it is that any time they’re together, whatever they’re doing is, by definition, _right_. Them being together is the only real requirement. Sometimes he takes the initiative and sometimes she does, but it’s always perfect, unforgettable, like their bodies were made for each other. Even now, after being so well-used the night before, when she looks at him she honestly considers dragging him back to bed for another seven straight hours of fucking. So for him to be jealous of Louis is absurd.

Of course, the absurdity won’t stop him if he decides to be jealous. And if he does, he’ll say something judgemental, she’ll shoot back a sarcastic comment, he’ll say something even worse, she’ll rub her past activities in his face, he’ll lose his temper completely, and the morning will spiral rapidly downwards. Or maybe they’ll end up back in his bedroom and give each other some new bitemarks to replace the fading ones. Either way, she probably won’t get to finish her toast. 

“We’re going to hire Sofia and Francesco to kill Louis,” she says finally, grudgingly, after a very long staring competition. “Or actually, Louis is going to hire them. Armand was practically like a father to him, and he’ll love the idea of heroically helping to catch his murderer. They come back to kill him, we grab them, you interrogate them. Easy.”

“The risk won’t put Louis off the idea?”

“Not if Treville says his father would’ve done it.” Treville was friends with old Henri de Bourbon way back when, and Louis’s daddy issues are truly the stuff of legend. Of course, Treville probably won’t consciously manipulate him – if anything, he’ll try and make it very clear that doing this is dangerous, that there’s a chance he’ll lose the money put into it, and that there’s no guarantee they’ll find out anything. Which will of course just convince Louis even more. He’ll still blame Treville if it doesn’t work out – one of Louis’s other defining traits is a lack of personal accountability – but until then he’ll do whatever he can to help.

Athos clears his throat. “So you said yesterday afternoon that you two weren’t…”

“Fucking anymore?” she says – possibly too helpfully, if the look he flashes her way is any indication. She reminds herself she doesn’t want him to get jealous, but honestly, riling him up may just be a reflex at this point. Still, she rolls her eyes at him and bites into another piece of toast, not continuing until she’s finished the mouthful. “We’re both adults. I think we can use the words. And no, we’re not.”

“What exactly happened between you two?” He looks faintly queasy as he asks, probably afraid he’ll get a play-by-play – or a blow-by-blow, to be more accurate.

A lot of responses to that occur to her, but she pauses – she suspects this weird truce between them is fragile, based largely on his concern for her and a lot of really great sex. She should try not to push too far. “Nothing as interesting as what you’re imagining. About half a year ago, Armand heard rumours that Louis went to someone else for some advice he’d normally come to us for. He asked me to see if I could persuade Louis to confide in me about it.” She shrugs. “I could. He and his wife were going through a rough patch, pretty much living separate lives, and Louis was very enthusiastic about some feminine company. Armand used the information I got to make sure Louis didn’t go to anyone else for advice next time. And that was it.”

“Really?” He meets her eyes steadily until she looks away. “Because Ana de Bourbon seemed to think it was more than that.”

“He kept asking me out for a while after that, I suppose,” she admits, a little grudgingly. In some ways it had reminded her of her early days with Athos – an adoring man encouraging her to spend his money however she liked, taking her to the kind of places that would probably have thrown her out without him there, judgmental stares and whispers only goading her onwards – but in other ways, nothing could have been more different. It was a shallow, materialistic little parody of her original Cinderella story, not a re-enactment. “We got along well, for a while. He’s a useful person to be friends with.”

Not that they were ever friends, really, or anything close. Like most of her relationships, it was highly transactional – he provided information, access, and influence, she provided… well, sex. Delightful companionship, witty banter, undeserved ego-stroking, and the occasional piece of advice, but mainly sex. Maybe Athos had a point when he said her employment under Richelieu wasn’t as far removed from sex work as it could’ve been. Or maybe that’s just the only way she knows how to have relationships, with one exception.

With Louis, though, the transactional nature of it had gone unreferenced throughout the relationship, to the point where she’s not sure he even realised that’s what was going on. Louis grew up with ludicrous amounts of money, influence and power as his birthrights, so it’s likely none of his relationships have ever been based on him as an individual instead of his material advantages. Of course, despite being a very friendly, sweet and even funny person in some ways, Louis doesn’t seem to exactly view the other people in his life as individuals with thoughts, feelings and needs of their own outside him, so he’s not entirely a victim here. He just… lives in a different world. 

“Yesterday you told me that Louis’s not even talking to you, that Treville needs to be the one to call him.” Athos says slowly.

“Well, not all friendships last.” She’s not sure she’s ever had a real friendship, but that’s what she’s heard.

He studies her for a few moments. “What did you do?”

“Nothing, this time,” she says honestly. “Madame de Bourbon made it clear he was ruining any chance of repairing their marriage, and of course, he decided that their estrangement was entirely my fault.” Because nothing in the world could ever be Louis’s fault. If he’d known about Aramis, he might not have been so quick to assign blame to her, but Madame de Bourbon is much more discreet about her affairs than Louis ever will be. The only reason Milady even knew about their feelings for each other was thanks to the week she had d’Artagnan’s phone bugged – the man spends a surprising amount of time fretting about his friends’ love lives.

“And it didn’t bother you until then that he was married.”

“What do you take me for?” She gives him a slightly vicious smile, not particularly appreciating his judgmental tone. “It didn’t bother me then, either. His marriage was his problem, not mine. _My_ problem was making sure our relationship was good for business, and that it ending didn’t end his business relationship with Armand as well. So Louis and I agreed that I’d stay out of his way for the good of his marriage. End of story.”

“Richelieu needed Louis de Bourbon that much?”

“A lot of our income came from him, but no, we didn’t need him, exactly. But if Armand was fond of anyone, it was Louis. They were practically family.” She’s enjoying watching Athos move around the little kitchen, cleaning everything up, but it’s not entirely pleasurable – the domesticity of it all managed to be adorable, suffocating, and heartbreaking all at once.

“Really?”

“Such surprise. I won’t deny there was some personal gain in there as well – Armand was very good at steering him in the right directions. It was a family tradition, really. He steered old Henri the same way, and if anything had ever happened to Louis, he probably would have steered Louis’s son just as well.”

“Isn’t his son only three?” 

“Yes, but Armand was a trustee, or a guardian, or something like that. He would have run the company if Louis died before little Louis came of age.” She shrugs. “Maybe now Armand’s gone, Madame de Bourbon will get her chance if Louis dies. If I were her, I’d be keeping my fingers crossed for the police to be incompetent and the assassins to get lucky.”

Athos glances at her sharply, pausing in cleaning up a frypan that looks like it’s never been used before. “You don’t seem too concerned if Louis lives or dies. Or that we’re involving him in a scheme that could help with the dying part.”

“We’ll be careful,” she says dismissively, wondering when she became part of a ‘we’ with the Musketeers and why she isn’t disgusted by the very thought. “Besides, it’s not like we’re planning to catch them in the act. Porthos thinks we can just use Louis to get them into the country, then intercept them at the airport on their way in.”

“Better.” He still doesn’t like it, she can tell, although she has no idea if that’s jealousy or just regular disapproval. He’s finished cleaning up – she assumes he ate first, but he’s not much of a breakfast person, so it’s possible the feast of toast, eggs and bacon was just for her.

She’s finished her toast now, so she decides it’s time to make her exit. “Anyway. I should get back to the hotel, get dressed.”

“You got a hotel room?” He moves around to stand in front of her. For a second she thinks he’s going to take her plate, but instead he leans against counter, arms bracketing her, and just looks at her.

“Yes,” she says, wondering why exactly he looks so perturbed, and why she’s enjoying his stare so much anyway. “My accounts are being unfrozen as we speak.”

“I thought you were going to stay here.” He glances away, but he’s still too close, and she can see the emotions pass across his face.

What is he looking for here? For them to act like they’re still married, spend their days together working on this case, spend their mornings and nights screwing on every flat surface they can find, but do their best to avoid talking about it in any way, shape or form? She’s not opposed to the idea, now that she thinks of it, but it’s hardly going to prevent confusion.

“You should meet up with the others while I go clean up,” she says, to avoid saying anything else. “Huey, Dewey and Louie will be lost without you. Not to mention actual Louis.” 

“We have a little while,” he says softly, and leans in to kiss her.

It gets out of hand immediately. She’s used to thinking of physical need similarly to the way she thinks about food – sometimes, you get hungry (although nowhere near as often as food, in her experience). You eat, you’re full, you’re fine. Simple, easy, nothing to go crazy about. She’d forgotten that with him it’s nothing like that. With him, there’s no such thing as enough, no such thing as fine. Her body can be sore, satiated, oversensitive, exhausted, and it doesn’t matter at all – as soon as he touches her, she wants more, her nerves light on fire, her breath comes in pants, her skin heats.

His hands slide up her legs and take the hem of the shirt with them, fingers stroking at her thighs, moving inwards. Then he’s rubbing against her, firm, knowing, and she wraps her legs around him and tips her head back blindly at the feeling of it. His fingers are as skilful as ever and he doesn’t play around, pushing two fingers inside her and finding the spot that drives her wild, and she mindlessly pushes against him, rolling her hips, hands grasping at him, needy and wanting. When he slows and withdraws she tilts her head forward again, letting her eyes slide open, mouth already parting to plead with him not to stop, but it turns out he’s just sliding to his knees to use his mouth as well.

He dives right in, licking into her with single-minded focus, wild for the taste of her. She knows he’s always loved to have her spread before him like this, loves the sounds he can force from her throat with every perfectly-placed lick, loves to thrust his tongue or fingers inside her and wind her up tighter and tighter. She was already close from him fingering her, and now as he licks at her roughly she whines with the pleasure of it, hands fisting in his hair with almost painful tightness, trying to rock against his mouth and tongue as he takes her to the edge, heels digging into his back and leaving painful divots that only seem to spur him on. She tries to pull him up but he refuses to go, redoubling his efforts, curving his fingers inside her at just the right angle to bring her off, flattening his tongue on her clit and laving in the frantic rhythm that never fails to make her wild, and then her body tenses, nails scraping against his scalp as she comes hard, broken moans and little shrieks escaping her with every deep thrust of his fingers. He keeps her going as long as he can and then softens his touch as she returns, gasping and winded, back to earth.

“Come up here,” she manages to gasp out after a while, and when he obeys she pulls him in towards her to kiss him again, open-mouthed and more lazily than before, tasting her own arousal, hand already reaching out to slide down his trackpants and curl around his dick. She brings her other hand to it as well, one working the base and the other the head, and she feels him groan and thinks smugly that there’s a very real risk he’ll come right away, since he's already on the edge just from eating her out. His hands are on her hips, fingers digging in desperately as he tries to fight off the coils of pleasure taking him over, not wanting to come until he’s buried deep within her, but when he moans out a plea she takes mercy on him and lightens her touch before he spills. 

“We’ll be late,” she says teasingly into his ear, and then licks his neck just to feel him shudder as she pulls his pants partway down with one hand, then using her foot to drag them even further, before wrapping her thighs tightly around his hips.

“They’ll survive,” he says roughly, and pushes into her.


	12. Baby Sitters

D’Artagnan is trying to decide if Louis de Bourbon is always this way, or if there’s some form of chemical assistance going on. He’s also trying not to indicate through word or deed that he’s met Ana de Bourbon multiple times, because he has no idea if it’s supposed to be a secret or not. She greeted him (not by name) in a friendly but slightly aloof manner as they entered, but since then has been absorbed with playing with her small son, who may be the most well-behaved child d’Artagnan’s ever seen. At least Aramis isn’t here, that’s one mercy. Treville probably isn’t aware of the history there.

“Louis, I’m just not sure you’ve fully considered it,” Treville is saying gently right now. “While we think we can figure out what flights they’re taking based on the information we have – their current location, where they’re flying to, age, appearance, likely aliases – it’s not certain. And if we don’t, there’s every chance they may actually try to kill you. Now, we can try to protect you -”

“Armand Richelieu was one of my closest friends, and I’ll do whatever it takes to help find his killer,” Louis says in a heroic tone, before grinning again, a little foolishly. “Besides, it’s rather exciting, isn’t it? Assassins coming after me.” They all look at him in silence, and after a moment he continues, just as brightly. “Do you know, I watched a movie once where that happened? I don’t remember what it was called though. I think maybe Brad Pitt was in it. Or that man who looks like him.”

“I understand you want to help,” Treville starts again.

D’Artagnan has not-all-that-vivid memories of getting quite high at a party when he was younger. He assumes he seemed a lot like Louis does now. Continually speaking off-topic, expecting the conversation to revolve around whatever idea caught his mind, very cheerful, and a bit dopey. The only difference is that instead of being as lazy and easy-going as d’Artagnan was when high, Louis changes moods considerably faster than his three-year-old son.

“Well, apparently you don’t!” Louis’s face twists into a frown immediately. “Armand would have done the same for me, you know. He was such a wonderful man. Wasn’t he, darling?”

“Wonderful,” Ana de Bourbon says, a little dryly. She looks at Treville, gaze thoughtful. “I assume you’ll have people guarding Louis throughout this plan. And possibly a safe house of some kind?”

“It will be suspicious if he changes his routine that much. We’d prefer him to stay in the home.”

“Well, then, I suppose we’ll go stay with Marie until these assassins are caught. I don’t want little Louis in any danger, and I imagine a hotel would look bad.” Ana looks at her husband. “If you think that sounds good?”

“You hate my mother,” he points out, looking momentarily surprised, but almost proud of himself for knowing that.

“Yes. You also hate your mother. Regardless, we’ll survive.”

Louis lapses into a big smile again, giving his wife an adoring look that makes d’Artagnan mentally re-evaluate their marriage. “Such a sacrifice! See, with examples like that, how can I _not_ do my best to help Armand in any way possible? Do you know how many times he saved my company? Through my ideas, of course, but no one could carry out plans the way Armand could. I miss him so dreadfully.”

Treville sighs. “Alright. Then we’ll set this up. However, as I mentioned, we only need fifty percent of the money, Louis. I’ll transfer the rest back to you.”

“Oh. Are you sure? Won’t paying the whole thing in advance be more persuasive?”

D’Artagnan briefly wonders how this man became a billionaire, and then remembers the magical power of inheritance. Since d’Artagnan’s inheritance from his parents was a postage-stamp-sized farm in Gascony, it’s generally pretty easy to forget.

“No,” Treville says, sounding like he very badly wants to facepalm. “No, it would not. Now, d’Artagnan will be guarding you, just in case we have our information wrong and we don’t get them at the airport. I’ll assign another one of my men to Madame de Bourbon and your son, if they’re going to be at a different location – also just as a precaution.” 

D’Artagnan tries not to give the Captain a betrayed look for this. As the least experienced member of their team, he’s used to getting assigned the worst jobs. This feels like it’s crossing a line though. He would by far prefer the toddler. He _likes_ toddlers. It’s not that he dislikes Louis, exactly, it’s just that he’s already realised that the man has the attention span of a goldfish, the impulse control of a drunk frat boy, a variety of enthusiastic but highly misguided bright ideas, and a kind of cheerfully-oblivious inconsiderateness that might be just part and parcel of the whole ‘billionaire’ deal.

Louis considers this for a moment, then looks at d’Artagnan. “Can I have a bulletproof vest? Just in case.”

“Sure, why not,” d’Artagnan says. Louis can borrow his.

“Can I have a cool codename? Just in case.”

“Sure, why not.”

“Can I have a gun? Just -”

_“NO.”_

X_X_X_X

The café is busy and bustling, but the people sitting in the corner are completely still, like rocks in the stream.

“I understand you’ve made a deal with the police.” Rochefort’s voice is smooth and cultured, with just a hint of amusement in it.

Milady doesn’t trust that light tone to his voice at all. And that’s not just because she doesn’t trust him at all, but because she’s heard it before – he’s light, he’s amused, he’s easy-going, and then suddenly some internal switch flips and he’s capable of wrapping his hands around her throat and squeezing. Milady hadn’t forgotten he was after her, not exactly, but Sarazin’s been her concern for so long that thoughts of him outweighed worry about Rochefort. Now, of course, she wonders if it would have been wiser to have kept her accounts frozen, to just stay with Athos instead of letting herself become trackable again.

She hadn’t expected him to come after her, not really – she has no evidence against him, and the Musketeers are the ones who got everything from his safe, so there’s really no point in threatening her or coercing her – but here he is, and he wants something, she can tell. It can’t just be to show her he can get to her, surely.

There’s no _reason_ to come and speak to her, though. It would have been useful to threaten her (or even kill her) before they found Sarazin, but now her only usefulness to the investigation is her skillset – she has no additional knowledge to help the cops with Sofia and Francesco, or with dealing with Rochefort himself. Really, if it weren’t for the tremendous amount of respect the Musketeers have for her (dislike, yes, but also respect: it was Armand who taught her how the two were often interlinked), they’d hardly care to keep her in the loop at all. She’d be reduced to skulking in her hotel waiting for word on whether she’s going to jail or not. Instead, they’ve chosen to treat her basically as CI from now until they end of the case, and give her the level of trust (well, slight distrust) required of that relationship – but they don’t have to, and she certainly doesn’t have better access than whoever he’s bribed in the department. And yet he’s here, and clearly, he wants something. Hopefully it’s not her blood.

Still. They’re in public, in the coffee shop two buildings down from her hotel, where Rochefort not-so-politely steered when she came down through the foyer on her way out, his muscle following indiscreetly. The nearby waitress already looks concerned about the large, violent-looking man who’s taken up position next to her chair, and Milady smiles and sips at her coffee to show how unthreatened she is by him and by his employer, by the fact that Rochefort knows about her deal.

“Now where would you have heard a thing like that?”

“One hears things, Milady.” He sips his as well, and gives her that unnerving cool smile. “People always have something you can leverage, don’t they? Greed often works best, but if not, some other kind of self-interest can do the trick. Lean just a little, and all the words they’ve been holding in come spilling out.”

Milady… well. She agrees, of course she does, but she feels an instinctive distaste at the idea of agreeing with this man. 

“I think you’re someone who all but worships self-interest,” he continues. “And I know our encounters have been somewhat… strained… in the past, but I think we could manage to work together for our mutual interests.”

“And what mutual interests would those be?”

“Not going to jail,” he says softly. “Have you read the file they got from me? It’s lacking a lot of detail, isn’t it? After all, it was just a list of some of your greatest hits compiled to persuade you to be more reasonable.”

She pauses, sets her coffee down gingerly, and pays attention.

“Our friend Sarazin had more proof, but it was taking time to put it together and I didn’t have time, I needed to get the files before prying eyes looked into them, so I just went with what he could gather at short notice.” He gives her another smile, unmistakeably triumphant. “How many more crimes do you think he can provide proof of? You _were_ his right-hand woman, after all, and an accessory to nearly everything he did back then, even excluding any other thefts or solicitations he might not have included in the original file. He could bury you so completely that no deal could get you out, so your detective friends would spit on you. And if I give him the go-ahead, I assure you, he’ll do it.”

“If that’s true, I can’t imagine why you’re here,” she says in her politest tone.

Her heart is racing, though, and he’s exactly the kind of man who can almost sense fear. She was perfectly well aware that Sarazin could incriminate her for more than was in the file, but since he has an obvious grudge against her, she figured no one would be likely to listen. She thought he would need real proof, and she’d assumed he didn’t have any more than what made its way into Rochefort’s file, all of which is covered by her deal. Her plan was, essentially, to wait and keep her fingers crossed – not exactly a foolproof plan. 

Still, it’s a better one than listening to this madman. “If you could destroy me so easily, you wouldn’t need to speak to me instead.”

“You think I’ll hesitate to bury you to help myself?”

“I think you’re hesitating right now, so either you’re incapable, or you don’t think it will help you.” She shrugs, sips again, although it burns her mouth. Her coffee’s very hot. She could pour it into his lap. She briefly dwells happily on the idea. It would be fun watching him try and maintain that look of effortless superiority while suffering third degree burns to his private parts. “So what do you want, Rochefort? And please, be specific.”

“Are you trying to record me, make me incriminate myself?” he says, looking at her in amusement. He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a little black box, barely large than a lipstick, with a button on top. When he depresses it, it makes a clicking noise, a little spark is visible for a moment, and there’s a slight smell of burning. Someone on the other side of the room swears loudly. “I would have thought you were smarter than that.” He gives a little shrug. “If you have any listening devices on you, I think you’ll find they’ve shorted out. Unfortunately everyone else within a one block radius has probably lost their phones or tablets, as well, but you know – you can’t be too cautious.”

She doesn’t have any listening devices, as it happens. It makes sense a man who’s too paranoid to have video cameras anywhere in or around his house and who clearly buys his bug scramblers in bulk wouldn’t be easy to record, but in this case, she just hadn’t had the chance to grab any. That’s probably for the best, if he’s telling the truth – those things are expensive.

That settled, he continues. “Your deal is to catch the man who killed Richelieu,” he says, then smiles thinly. “Well. Or woman. Regardless, my name appears nowhere in that deal.”

“You want to frame someone else?” She snorts. “And you want my help to do it? I don’t think you’re playing at my level, Rochefort. I’m not going to agree to that.”

“Then you’ll go to jail,” he says simply.

She pauses. “Why would I trust you to keep to any deal we make? The last time we were in the same room, you throttled me.”

“Not to death.” He says it like this is eminently reasonable. “But you’re quite right. Tell you what, I’ll do you a favour first – I’ll deal with your little Sarazin problem. All you have to do for me in return is keep an eye on your little detectives and have a few friendly talks with me about what they’re doing, which is hardly onerous, and in return you’ll be free. Working with me is pure profit.”

“Pure profit how?” She doesn’t want to be interested. She can’t help herself.

“If you attempt to take me down for Richelieu’s murder, you’ll find a distinct paucity of evidence. And the DA’s office against my lawyers – well, I’m sure they’ll do their best, as well.” He seems to love the sound of his own voice. She doesn’t share his enjoyment. “But their chances aren’t good, and they need to actually bring charges for your deal to stick, which I doubt they’ll be brave enough to do with little to no evidence. However, if you help, I’m sure _scores_ of evidence will be found on the other alleged killer.”

“You’re assuming I don’t care about you murdering my boss,” she notes. “That I’m selfish enough to choose my own freedom over getting justice for him.”

“Yes. I am.” He reaches out and runs a fingertip down her cheek. She doesn’t yank her head away, but only because she doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’s getting to her. “You, Richelieu, me… we’re all a very specific kind of person, aren’t we? Efficient, pragmatic, sensible. I doubt he’d blame you. You did such very good work for him, but he’s well past caring what you do now. In fact, if you help me, I might hire you myself, if you’re interested. Dealing with your Sarazin issue would be just as good as the signing bonus Richelieu gave you, wouldn’t it? But of course you’ll be _free_ to do as you like, freedom being the important point here.”

“I’d be betraying a lot of people. Breaking the law again.”

“Oh, don’t pretend you care about that just to drive up the price. What I’m offering is already more than enough. You know every one of those people you’re trying to claim loyalty to would happily see you in jail for some of the things you’ve done. They only want to use you.”

“Which is exactly what you’re trying to do.”

“But I’m doing it better, aren’t I? And at least I’m honest about it.” That unblinking stare, that creepy smile, that absolute confidence. She hates him.

“I could just run, you know. Leave you all to sort it out without me.”

“Yes,” he says, again with that slimy smile. “But you won’t, will you? There’s things here you’re not willing to leave behind, and believe me, I understand _that_ more than anyone else on the planet.” Before she can ask what he means by that – is he talking about Athos? – he continues. “I’ll be in touch. I do hope you’re grateful for the opportunity.”

He leaves her staring into her rapidly cooling coffee, and contemplating her options. All of a sudden, none of them seem good.

X_X_X_X

“Alright, and where do you want this block?”

“Top!”

“Hmm, I don’t know. What if it makes the whole thing fall?”

“Yes!” Little Louis insists, and then the whole thing does fall, obviously, but Aramis has pulled him back so that nothing hits him, and he laughs with glee at watching it topple. Aramis can remember doing that when he was a small child – half the fun of building things was watching them fall apart, for him. The kid might be Louis’s son, but already he finds that little Louis reminds him a lot of himself. But mostly he reminds Aramis of Ana.

He can feel Ana’s gaze on the back of his neck, and he looks around to meet it. She looks… sad. But she brightens her gaze when little Louis twists to stare at her as well, and says, “I think it’s someone’s bed-time!”

“No!” But little Louis knows his mother too well to think he’ll get away with direct refusal, so instead he bargains. “’Ramis has to read to me tonight. ‘Ramis ‘n you, mama.”

He gets what he wants, as determined small children normally do, and Aramis finds himself on one side of little Louis as Ana perches on the other, doing silly voices for a child he never met before today.

It’s… nothing he’s ever experienced before. Back when he was in high school, his girlfriend found out she was pregnant. He was religious enough that as soon as she told him, he started making plans – specifically, marriage, as soon as possible. He thought he could leave school, get a job at the local shops, support them both. He thought he was much more adult than he was, then. It didn’t end up happening, of course, but he can remember the thoughts that filled his mind, the feverish excitement. He’d pictured that baby until it almost seemed real to him – pink, wrinkly, bawling, helpless, exhausting, often gross, and the most amazing thing in the world. Sometimes he finds himself calculating how old it would be now if she’d gone through with having it – pictures a sullen teenage son, all acne and awkwardness; or a rebellious daughter, sneaking out at night and shouting _I hate you_ when caught.

When he fell in love with Ana a bit over a year ago, he was well aware she had a child. There were nannies and her interfering mother-in-law always looking after the child in question, and it had seemed less important than the fact she had a husband, but he’d known she was a mother. He remembers he thought that she must be the most wonderful mother in the world, so full of love and sweetness and patience, but with a core of steel that meant she’d raise her children to be just as strong.

“Little Louis is incredible,” he says to her softly after the boy’s fallen asleep and they’ve made their way back to the kitchen. Ana’s mother-in-law, Marie, is out at her new boyfriend’s place, apparently, but due to be back in a few hours. For someone with so many opinions about how to raise her grandson, she seemed remarkably uninterested in the boy himself.

“I know,” she says, a little shortly, pouring herself a glass of wine.

“You’ve done a good job with him.”

“Have I? Or have the nannies?”

“ _You_ have,” he insists, catching her hand in his. “I can see you in everything he says.”

She softens, and gives him a smile. “Even when he’s throwing a tantrum like earlier?”

“Well, if you’d spilled your orange juice and then not been given any more, I expect you would’ve gotten carried away by the outrage too.” 

This time she laughs, and pours him a glass of wine as well, even though he’s technically on duty. If Treville knew the history here, he never would have asked Aramis to guard them, but he doesn’t, so he did. Aramis is enjoying every minute, although there’s a painful squeezing feeling in his chest when he thinks too much about it.

“I told him earlier about the pool near my place,” he says, after a little while, clearing his throat. “All the water slides. He’d love to go there sometime. It’s actually a really nice neighbourhood for kids.”

She puts her wine down. “Aramis.”

He can’t help himself, and he won’t apologise for wanting her in his life. “It was just a comment. A completely-irrelevant comment.”

“I care about my husband a lot,” she says bluntly.

“Like you care about me?” His voice cracks as he says it.

“No, of course not, but -” She picks up the wine again but doesn’t drink it. It seems like she just wants something to do with her hands. “He’s the father of my child. He’s a good father, he really is. And for a very long time, he was my only friend.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Believe it! I was home-schooled, and so was he, and we were almost the only people each other’s age that we knew. We started dating very young, and then he asked me to marry him, and then there we were, married.” Her voice wavers a little. “I didn’t really understand there was another choice. My parents certainly didn’t encourage me to look for one, they’re quite old-fashioned and they married young themselves, so it seemed normal to them. I took care of my little brothers and sisters like a tiny adult, they said, I was so pretty, I was so sweet and kind – I was wifely, maternal, the perfect little woman, everyone said it. Born to be married.”

“Marriages don’t have to last forever, not anymore,” he says softly. He can feel hope burning in him, just like it did almost a year ago when he said these exact words. She looks so wide-eyed and unsure, staring at him like that, somehow still impossibly lovely even in the baggy Iron Man pyjama pants and top she’s wearing that must surely have been picked out by her son. No one else would recognise her as the elegant Ana de Bourbon like that, but he thinks she looks almost more beautiful than she does in her stylish, tailored sundresses or designer cardigans.

“Yes, I thought that, sometimes.” She sips idly at the wine. “But it wasn’t like I wanted someone else, and our whole lives were wrapped together. My work was to help his, my goals were to help him, and I was so lucky to be so very rich and be able to do or have anything I wanted. Something was missing, but I had a solution – I thought having a son would fill that hole in my life, get rid of… what was missing.”

“Did it?” He knows the answer, or suspects it, at least.

“For a while. Then I met you, and I suppose I found new missing parts. You made a hole just for yourself.” She seems almost amused by that, although her eyes say something else as she turns to look at him again.

“Then why aren’t you with me?” This time his voice doesn’t crack, but it’s an effort.

“Because I have a son, and a job, and a family, and a _life_ , Aramis.” She sighs. “It’s… complicated. _I’m_ complicated. Do you know how little time you’ve actually spent with me? It’s probably less than a day worth of time, if you add it all together. You only met my son today.”

“Sometimes you just know.”

“And sometimes you’re wrong,” she says. “Little Louis shouldn’t have to pay for it if I make a mistake, but he will. I don’t want him to grow up in the middle of an endless battle between divorced parents – or grow up without me at all, which is what would happen if Louis wanted full custody.”

“No one would take a child from their mother,” he objects.

She gives him an old-fashioned look. “When the father’s a billionaire and the mother’s unemployed, disowned by her family, and living in sin with her – what _is_ the male version of a mistress called?”

“I wouldn’t call it sin, exactly,” he murmurs, trying to lighten the strain on her face. “Unless you enjoy referring to it that way. A love nest, perhaps?”

The strain does lighten, slightly, but she doesn’t smile. She’s clear-eyed, and she sees right through his attempt at levity. “I think maybe you haven’t thought this through. But I have to. Can you understand that, at least?”

He gives in, of course. “I’ll try to. I’m sorry.” He sighs. “I just – I wish you would just divorce him. Be free to do as you like. No one should be with someone they aren’t in love with.”

“You sound like Rochefort.” She sounds amused again. “He’s been telling me that since the moment I said yes. But even he admits that if I was going to end up in a loveless marriage, Louis isn’t the worst person to be in one with – and since Rochefort is overprotective at the best of times, that says a lot. I sometimes think if he could build a hundred-foot wall around me to keep me safe from anything in the world that could hurt me, he’d do it in a second.”

“You and Rochefort are close?” he asks carefully.

“I’ve known him even longer than Louis,” she says, clueless about why he might be interested in Rochefort. They haven’t been exactly open about their investigation, and for good reason. For one thing, if Louis knew they were going after his favourite employee (now that Richelieu’s dead, anyway), he’d be unlikely to help them. “So I suppose Louis wasn’t my _only_ friend. Anyway, Rochefort’s always said that if I ever can’t take it anymore, for whatever reason, I can move in with him. But I doubt he’s serious – his life is wound around Louis almost as much as mine is.”

“Well, you know you have the same offer from me,” he says a little hoarsely. “No strings attached, unless you want them to be. And I’m not at all dependent on Louis.”

“I know. Thank you, Aramis. And… seeing you with my son…” She takes almost a gulp of her wine, seemingly trying to drown the feeling in her voice. “Thank you for that, too.”

X_X_X_X

When Milady sashays into the bar they’ve pretty much made their base of operations, she immediately gets the bartender’s attention – the dress she’s wearing is very low-cut. Of course, that’s par for the course with her. Her outfits aren’t exactly meretricious – the cuts and fabrics are too flattering and expensive to be considered trashy – but they’re always extremely distracting, and he knows that’s one hundred percent deliberate.

Once upon a time, it amused him, the way men on the street would gape at her as she went past, the way Remi would stutter and blush whenever she spoke to him, the way Thomas would break off mid-sentence when she entered a room. He trusted her so completely, and they were so much in love, that it never even crossed his mind to be jealous. Protective, if they were inappropriate or made her feel uncomfortable, but not jealous. He can’t imagine ever feeling that secure again.

Of course, she doesn’t exactly try and help with that. “No Louis?” she asks, raising an amused eyebrow and deliberately goading him with the mention of her ex-boyfriend.

He rises above it, although a part of him would like to pull her into a private corner somewhere and remind her exactly who she belongs to – or, wait, doesn’t belong to. Fuck, he’s bad at casual. “At his house. D’Artagnan’s guarding him, Aramis has Madame de Bourbon, and Porthos is at the airport with a squad of uniforms and airport guards to help him catch Sofia and Francesco.”

Her eyebrows climb even higher. “My God, I’ve misjudged Treville. He _does_ have a sense of humour. A nasty one.”

Actually, what he has is no idea of the backstory between Ana and Aramis, but it amounts to pretty much the same thing. Still, it could be worse, Aramis could have been set to guard Louis, for example. Or Athos could have. The fact that d’Artagnan might snap and kill the man before the end of the first day is beside the point.

“So what are you doing?” She sits down on a nearby chair, crossing her legs. Of course, this means his eyes are automatically drawn to them. Really, a night of wild sex should have taken the edge off, but he’d forgotten what it was like to know he could kiss her, know he could see her naked, know he could drag her to bed nearly whenever he wanted, and she’d enthusiastically agree. It’s one thing to know that if she recrosses her legs again he’ll get an eyeful of the silky, smooth length of thigh between stocking and panties, and quite another to know he could probably persuade her back to his apartment and taste it.

“Keeping an eye on Sarazin.”

“From a bar on the other side of the city? Your eyesight is excellent.”

He rolls his eyes at her, because she deserves it for that comment. “I picked up your phone from the precinct since IT area has everything they need off it. And I knew you were going to stop by, so I thought I’d wait here to trade it back for mine. I expected you to be here much sooner, though.”

“Decided to have a nap when I got back to my hotel,” she says, giving him an evil smirk. But she’s tensed, slightly, and he’s not sure why. “I was little worn out, after all.”

He holds out her phone to her and she takes it, tucking it in her handbag. Then she turns to go. He clears his throat. “My phone?”

“Think I left it at the hotel,” she says casually. “I’ll get it to you later.”

There’s something wrong with her casual tone. It’s _too_ casual. And she looks strangely uncertain.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she says automatically, but then hesitates, on the verge of saying something. “Athos… this morning…”

When he made her breakfast? Or when he asked her to stay with him? “What?” he says, a little too sharply.

Whatever she was going to say originally, she swallows. “Athos, would you arrest me?” she asks, unexpectedly, which doesn’t have anything to do with this morning. He blinks at the abrupt subject change. “If this doesn’t work out and I try and run. You let me go before, but…”

It feels like she’s asking something else, and he hesitates too. It’s one thing to give into his guilt and tell her she has a head start. It’s quite another to admit that he’ll repeatedly ignore his duty as a police officer and let her run off to the Bahamas. Besides anything else, if she fails to fulfil her end of the deal, that will make Treville look bad enough for going to bat for her – if they lose her into the bargain, that’s probably Treville’s job gone, the Musketeers disbanded or demoted, the DA’s office refusing to make any deals with them for a long time, and a host of other things. All to let his ex-wife once again ignore any consequences to her actions.

He has a mental image of Anne in a prison jumpsuit, wan and scared-looking. It’s inaccurate: as if she’d ever look scared. Still, it does the trick.

Fuck, of course he’ll let her go. He’ll curse her and curse himself and absolutely let Treville throw a few punches at him (not that the other man ever would), but he’ll let her go, if given the chance. Because he couldn’t live with himself otherwise. Part of it’s that he owes her that much – owes her a thousand times more than that, after what he did to her. But part of it’s just, well, _her_.

But he can’t say so, because saying that is tantamount to saying, _I care more about you than about my friends, my job, my morality, and basically everything else in my life_. Now that _would_ be mixed messages, since he still can’t trust her as far as he can throw her, since she’s still leaving, since they’re still done.

“The question won’t come up,” he says shortly, trying to radiate assurance. “We’re closer to getting Rochefort every day.”

“How comforting,” she drawls, and it couldn’t be more obvious that he’s said the wrong thing. Any vulnerability in her expression is well and truly gone, now, her face closed off and cold, and he hates it.

“Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet now. This was your idea in the first place.” Of course, she’s made so many references to running if it goes wrong that he’s lost count. But this is the first time he sees it as it is, not a joke or a last resort, but a quite deliberate, cold-blooded plan. If this doesn’t work out, or even if she just thinks it won’t, she’ll run, and she won’t care that she leaves Treville’s career a ruin and damages the rest of theirs as well.

“And my ideas are excellent,” she agrees, but her voice still has that edge to it. “But if you arrest me, don’t expect to get any conjugal visits, darling.” She turns to leave again, but he reaches out to grab her arm and pull her back to him. She opens her mouth, no doubt to say something else sarcastic, and he steals a kiss from her parted lips, then another, and then one more for luck, and he needs a lot of luck these days so he tightens his arms around her and deepens the kiss.

There’s nothing short and sweet about it, instead it’s unchaste, rough, even dirty, and entirely unsuited for midday, even in a dingy bar. She makes a little noise of surprise against his mouth but when he buries a hand in her hair and holds her in place so he can invade her mouth the way she likes she opens under the pressure. He doesn’t let her go until she’s dropped everything she’s holding to wrap her arms around him, trying to press closer, completely forgetting where they are and what they’re supposed to be doing. If there was a bed nearby, they’d already be pulling clothes off, but as it is he settles for sliding a hand up her leg inappropriately high and she settles for rubbing herself against him until he groans at the feel of it.

It takes a real effort to drag his mouth away from hers, to remember what he’s doing. “ _No_ conjugal visits?” he asks roughly, dragging his blunt nails lightly down the bare patch of thigh still exposed by her slightly rucked-up dress. The bartender looks vaguely entertained by the show they’re putting on, but the rest of the clientele is made up of heavy day-drinkers and unconscious people from last night, so for the most part he can bury any shame at the public display. He tries to remind himself he’s not doing this for pleasure. Despite all the pleasure.

She’s still gasping, sexily dishevelled, make-up a bit smeared and pupils close to being blown. “Maybe… one or two,” she allows, a real smile crossing her face briefly. “Unless my cellmate is very attractive, of course. Or one of the gua – wait, what are you doing?”

Athos ignores her high-pitched protest, continuing to rummage in the handbag he scooped off the floor. “Stealing is wrong,” he reminds her gravely. “I’m getting back my taxi money from the other day.”

“Multimillionaires, so stingy.” Despite her quip, he can see alarm in her face, and she tries to grab the bag back from him. But he’s already found what he was actually looking for, since he really doesn’t care about taxi money.

“My phone?” He shakes his head at her slightly in disappointment. “Looks like you didn’t leave it at the hotel after all.” He glances at it. “Except that apparently you did break it. Is this what you were being so sketchy about? You dropped my phone? Anne, it cost less than take-out for my friends costs, most nights, what with how much Porthos eats. You didn’t have to worry.”

She tosses her hair. “Most people keep useful information on their phones, Athos. Forgive me for thinking a cop might be one of them.”

“We can’t all have a searchable library of listening devices,” he drawls, tossing the broken phone in his own bag. He kisses her again, this time more slowly, and she winds her fingers in his hair and leans against him in something like relief.

He doesn’t look at the phone again as he leaves, or when he gets in his car. He waits until he’s ten blocks away before pulling over and digging it out again. He doesn’t want her to see him looking at it, but if he waits too long, he suspects it will mysteriously go missing.

Athos isn’t as tech-savvy as Aramis, but he’s not as clueless as most people think. This phone wasn’t dropped, he’d suspect that even if she hadn’t acted so suspiciously about it – something else happened to it, judging by the way the screen’s bright blue and has lines of text and numbers across it. He stares at it for a while longer, and then with a sigh, drives to Madame de Bourbon’s location.

Aramis looks horrifyingly settled in there, curled up watching Disney movies with a small child while Ana fields an important-sounding phone call. A dark-haired woman who has to be Louis’s mother is at the table, alternating between watching her daughter-in-law sourly and watching her grandson with mild antipathy.

Athos gives them both a nod and then draws Aramis away, to the child’s high-pitched disapproval. The other man gives him a questioning look. “Checking up on me?”

“No. Should I be?” Athos itches to tell his friend to be careful, but considering the circumstances, he’s entirely the wrong person to give that speech. Instead, he holds up the phone. “What happened to this? Your best guess.”

Aramis looks at it. “Ah, I couldn’t say. I mean really, I couldn’t. Not without actually being at the IT department at the precinct and having access to their tech. Could you ask them?”

Except it takes them days to do anything unless it’s part of a priority case, and he doesn’t want to log his phone as important evidence under false pretences – he has no idea if this is part of a case at all. It would have to be a low priority task, and that means time. “Best guess, I said. Preferably in words I understand.”

“Alright. In words you can understand, then. There’s technology you can use to kill all other technology around you. It’s expensive, absurdly illegal, and there’s no way of differentiating what kind of tech you want to bring down so it just kills and wipes everything within radius.” Aramis looks mildly concerned. “I’d guess someone set off one of those close to this phone. Is it yours?”

“Yes,” Athos says, feeling lead in his stomach. “Long story, I’ll explain later. And you think that’s the most likely cause of this?”

“Or it could be a very interesting virus I haven’t seen before, or any number of other things,” Aramis says. “You said best guess, and the way the screen looks reminds me of the last time I saw one of those used, back when I worked in the IT department. But it’s just a guess.”

“Thanks,” Athos says absent-mindedly.

So Milady de Winter accidentally set off an illegal tech-bomb, so what? It wouldn’t surprise any of them that she had one, really. Except that Aramis says they’re very expensive, and despite all of the designer dresses and fancy wine, he knows for the most part she’s surprisingly careful with her cash. She wouldn’t accidentally do anything like that. She almost never does anything by accident, come to think of it. Which means either she was trying to stop someone from using technology near her, or someone was trying to stop her, and he thinks the second one’s more likely.

It’s easy to assume that means they were trying to blow out her bugs – they’re one of her signature moves, after all. And if someone did do that, judging by her slight twitchiness earlier, she’s entirely aware of who and why, but doesn’t want to tell him. What the hell is his ex-wife up to now?

X_X_X_X

It’s hours later, and Athos is at the hospital now. He’s in the corridor outside of Sarazin’s room, waiting while the man’s prepped for transfer, organising the uniforms not still in there guarding to make sure the transfer from hospital room to cell goes perfectly smooth.

He’s left the phone with their IT people to confirm Aramis’s guess, but it’s low priority so he’s accepted that he may never get the damn thing back, even broken, and he’s trying to figure out what he should do. With anyone else, a confrontation would be the best way to go about it, but he’s fairly sure he’ll get nothing but a well-thought out and ironclad lie. If she doesn’t want to tell him, she won’t, fantasies about persuading it out of her in bed one moan at a time aside.

He doesn’t know what alerts him so quickly to the fact something’s gone wrong. Perhaps it’s the silence, or perhaps it’s just instinct. Nevertheless, he pauses in the middle of laying out exact specifications for the route they’ll take, and strides back to the room, flinging the door open.

There’s a large, heavily-muscled man there, a syringe depressed into the tubing Sarazin’s still hooked up to, but shouldn’t be. The heart monitor seems to have been taken offline – isn’t that supposed to cause more frenetic beeping, summoning nurses? Clearly this man knows what he’s doing, but equally clearly, he’s not a doctor, despite being dressed as one. He’s forgotten to put on gloves, his mask has slipped off one ear, doctors don’t wear boots like that, and more to the point, there are two policemen on the floor and a nurse who looks like he’s bleeding out beside them. In the frozen moment before everything starts happening very quickly, Athos sees his face before he pulls back the surgery mask he’s wearing to cover it better. It’s probably only for a fraction of a second, but good cops remember faces, and Athos is a very good cop.

Athos is raising his service weapon before it’s even a conscious thought. “Freeze,” he orders, though he knows it’s probably too late for Sarazin. Whatever was in the needle is in him, now, and this definitely isn’t a rescue attempt.

The not-doctor looks up at Athos, and instead of freezing, pulls a weapon of his own.

Athos plugs him in the right shoulder with pragmatic speed, but while the hit knocks the man back apparently he has a vest on, so all it does is wind him. Then Athos has to duck behind the doorframe to avoid the killer’s return fire. The walls aren’t thick enough to protect him, but they do make it difficult for the other man to know exactly where he is.

Unfortunately, one of the uniforms he was just giving instructions to is already moving forward, not hiding behind anything, and he seems to have forgotten he’s not wearing a vest. Athos doesn’t even have time to swear at the other cop’s stupidity, although he wishes he could – instead, he slams hard into the man’s legs, pushing them both to the side as bullets rip through the space where his head and chest were a moment before. Momentum carries them both into the wall, which has a cabinet against it – and judging by the noise and a few burning slashes of pain across Athos’s arms, decorating the top of the cabinet were a variety of glass vases that are no longer in existence. The dirt and flowers he ends up covered with are really just adding insult to injury.

By the time the tinkling noises have died down and the gunshots have stopped echoing, the man’s long gone. Athos barks orders at a few people, heads in another direction himself with scant heed for the fact that he’s dripping blood from a few locations, and places the hospital on alert as quickly as he can. Besides Sarazin, no one in the room died, but it seems like that was just because Athos got there so quickly – a few more minutes and the nurse at least would have been dead, and while the cops were only unconscious, they find another syringe of poison dropped on the floor that may have intended for them. They’re lucky he was trying to keep quiet until Athos came in and ruined it, otherwise he probably would have just shot them.

The trail’s picked up immediately – he shot a doctor on the west side of the building, thankfully non-fatally, then headed out into the city – and lost just as quickly. Someone must have picked him up, that’s the only explanation. Athos even has a pretty good guess where he was picked up from – there’s a street camera that’s been smashed with a stone, and that has to be deliberate. But otherwise, the killer’s simply vanished.

But Athos knows the man’s face.


	13. Temporary Fixes

“Huh,” Porthos says into the phone. “Interesting. Okay, gotta go. Yeah.”

He hangs up and gives a sort of mental shrug. Out there, Aramis is probably saying a prayer for the man’s dearly departed soul, but Porthos doesn’t feel too torn up about the loss. Of course, he’s pretty annoyed about it, because fucking hell, now they’re _never_ gonna know what Sarazin knew about Rochefort.

On the other hand, though, now Athos has a lead. If they can’t bring Rochefort down for Richelieu’s murder, maybe they can get him for Sarazin’s. The dickhead’s racking up quite the body count.

“Porthos?”

Porthos looks up from his scan of the place to find that the woman he just saw from the back and dismissed as a suspect – wrong hair, bit too short, no male companion, waiting around more than an assassin would – might not be Sofia, but is in fact someone he knows. “Alice?”

She brightens. “You remember me?”

“It was only a few weeks ago,” he says, giving her a genuine smile of pleasure. “I’m not that old, love. And you’re memorable. What’re you doing here?”

“I just got back from a week overseas.” She gives him a smile in return. “The Maldives. It was lovely, I honestly considered staying forever.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” he tells her, although he can’t keep his gaze on her for long. Sofia and Francesco could already be here. It took the IT department hours of blood, sweat and tears (literally, from the earful Porthos has gotten about it) to narrow down the possible flights they were on to so few. Luckily, Milady was able to give a rough description of what both of them look like, despite not having actually seen them before in person, so that helps a lot. He returns his gaze to Alice to find her biting her lip, looking more nervous than annoyed about what must look to her like him ignoring her. Very sweet woman. “Listen, I mean it. Promise. It’s good to see you again. I wanted to.”

“The other night, you didn’t -” she flushes and cuts herself off. “Never mind.”

“No, no, say it.” He darts a glance at her face again before returning to his search. Still no sign of their assassins. He hopes he catches them here, because otherwise they’ll turn up at Louis de Bourbon’s house and find d’Artagnan’s lost it and done their job for them, or turn up where Ana de Bourbon is staying and find Aramis building her kid a treehouse and scratching out Louis’s face from family photos. Better just to get it over with.

“You didn’t come and have that dance with me,” she says. “The one you said you were going to.”

“You were in a conversation,” he objects. “When I came over, you said it was one of your late husband’s friends. Hardly seemed appropriate for me to ask you out then, did it?”

She flushes even more, but her smile widens. “I thought we were just talking about a dance. Not a date.”

“Well. You know.” Porthos is grateful for how impossible it is for other people to tell when he’s blushing. “All in, yeah?”

While he’d started talking to Alice purely to blend in, it hadn’t taken him long to get to really like her – and also to be mildly concerned about her. Any woman who was willing to tell a complete stranger that she was well-off and lived alone needed someone to look out for her. And judging by how determinedly she’d gotten the waiters to bring him a plateful of food for himself, she’s a woman who likes looking after other people as well, so they might be a good match. He’s not like Aramis, who seems to only ever want women who he shouldn’t, or d’Artagnan, who seems to love throwing himself into complicated situations, and he’s definitely not like Athos and whatever he has going on, which seems to be unpronounceable. All Porthos wants is someone who likes him, and who likes being with him, and who makes him smile. Despite conventional wisdom, Porthos thinks that worthwhile things are often simple and do come easy – good mates, decent beer, nice girlfriend, a job where he gets to put bad guys away. And while Alice is neither simple nor easy in terms of personality, so far talking to her is both.

“So you’d like to go out sometime? Dinner, maybe?”

Porthos raises his eyebrows at her and flashes a grin. “You’re twisting my arm. You like Italian?”

“Who doesn’t like Italian?”

Good answer. Unfortunately, Porthos has just spotted some of the aforementioned bad guys. “Listen, I have to go.” He sees her face drop. “But you wait here, okay? In fact, consider it an order, so if you don’t, that’s failure to obey a police order, and there’s charges, and it’s complicated. Just stay here, alright? I’ll be back in one sec.”

He gestures to the closest guards and presses down on the walky-talky they gave him, giving everyone the location of the couple, but he’s already walking towards them. Neither of them look even slightly shifty, until the man spots him. It’s definitely Francesco, matching Milady’s description exactly, and he ducks his head and mutters something frantic into his ladylove’s ear. She turns and sees Porthos and her eyes widen slightly for only a second. Clearly, they know how to recognise cops on sight.

“Monsieur,” she says, giving him a sweet, slightly lost smile. “Do you work with the airport? We’re quite lost, and could use some help.”

Even as she’s speaking sweetly, though, her arm comes around in an arc, and if Porthos hadn’t moved a few steps back he’d take the heaviest-looking hand luggage he’s ever seen direct to the stomach. Instead, it swishes by, missing him entirely, and his smile widens until she instead throws it at his head, forcing him to duck. She darts off into the crowd, sliding between some people and pushing others over with ease. There’s a shriek.

“Get her,” Porthos yells to the guards in that direction, and they spring into action. Porthos is already moving after Francesco, though, who’s rabbiting back in the direction Porthos just came from. He’s a fast son of a bitch. He pushes a trolley Porthos’s way, but it misses and slams loudly into a nearby wall, and then he makes a little old lady scream by pushing her as well, and what with all the running guards and yelling people the airport’s suddenly chaos. However fast Francesco is, though, Porthos is faster – or maybe he’s just more motivated – and the chase is over before Francesco makes it more than twenty feet.

In fact, Porthos brings him down about five feet from Alice, who’s gaping at the sudden explosion into action. They go down in a sprawl of limbs near her, and Francesco tries to punch Porthos in the face, but Porthos just grabs his arm and twists and then Franceco’s face down with Porthos’s knee in the middle of his back. “You’re under arrest,” Porthos says to him cheerfully, grabbing his handcuffs off his belt one handed.

Then he looks up at Alice and gives her his brightest, most heroic grin. “So, are you free Friday?”

X_X_X_X

“I can take a taxi,” d’Artagnan objects, which is better than saying, _I don’t think I can stand another moment in your company_.

Louis is nice. Louis is very nice. He has no attention span, he has no tact, and he’s spoilt rotten, but he’s nice. He’s even tried to enter into d’Artagnan’s interests – admittedly, he did this by saying, “so, hedges! I hear Gascony has many of them?” followed by “Is it true in Gascony dating sheep is legal?” but still, he tried. And then after d’Artagnan couldn’t come up with anything to say to this, Louis spent half an hour throwing grapes at his face, because he seems to think policemen all have the same ‘don’t react to anything’ requirements as the guards at Buckingham Palace. And then he told a joke about an Irishman and a bar and had to restart seventeen times because he kept giggling too hard to say the punchline.

Okay, no, it doesn’t matter how nice Louis is. If Porthos had taken ten more minutes to catch the assassins, d’Artagnan would have quit. He could go back to Gascony and become a farmer. Constance might even love him enough to marry him anyway.

“Of course you’re not taking a taxi,” Louis says self-importantly. “I’ve already left a message with my darling wife to get her policeman to drive her to your little bar as well – he took his car to drive her about, apparently, since she always feels having a driver is too ostentatious for some reason. We can do an exchange, swap you for her. And little Louis, of course. So really, it’s much better if you join me in my town car. Plus, it has a wine fridge!”

This seems to be entirely unanswerable. It’s easier to just get in the car, so he does. Spending so many hours with Louis has worn him to shreds. He has new respect for Ana de Bourbon’s patience. 

When they get to the bar, Athos is there. He has a cut along one cheek, a bandaged arm, and an extremely annoyed look on his face. It only intensifies as he takes in Louis. “D’Artagnan,” he says with a nod. “No problems, then?”

D’Artagnan gives him an extremely forced smile. “Very quiet,” he says, which it was, or it would have been if Louis had ever stopped talking.

“Where’s the Captain?” Louis asks Athos, bright smile starting to fade to a pout. “I wanted to speak to him.”

“At his office,” Athos says, as if Louis is a bit slow. That’s probably unfair, since with his entire team having apparently taken up residence at a local bar, it’s not unreasonable to assume the Captain’s done the same. They’re lucky Louis will never question why they’re all at a bar during work hours. “Is there anything I can help you with?” He gives d’Artagnan a questioning look, clearly wondering why he brought him.

“Louis was nice enough to give me a lift,” d’Artagnan explains. Or at least his driver was, anyway.

“Actually, there _is_ something I wanted to speak to the Captain about, but I suppose you’ll do,” Louis says. “I think I should be part of interrogating these lowlifes.”

“No,” Athos says, in what, for him, is quite a polite and friendly tone.

“What – you just – you’re just saying _no_?” Louis splutters. “How dare you -”

“You’re not a policeman,” Athos says bluntly. “You’re not a lawyer. There is absolutely no reason you should be talking to our suspects. In fact, it would not only damage our case, it would -”

“Armand was my _closest friend_. If anyone has the right to be intimately involved in this investigation -”

Milady slides into the booth across from d’Artagnan approximately ten minutes into the argument, which has started to resemble a spoilt teenager shrieking at his stern father about how he never lets him do _anything_ , God, Dad, it’s like you don’t even want me to have a _life_. “Well, this looks like fun,” she says.

Louis hasn’t noticed her entrance yet, too intent on the argument. Athos does immediately, d’Artagnan can tell by the way he stiffens slightly, but he doesn’t acknowledge her presence. That’s probably for the best – d’Artagnan’s fairly sure the argument will only worsen if she gets involved. Either that, or morph into an argument about something completely different.

It’s probably a coincidence Milady’s wearing what looks like an over-sexualised parody of Madame de Bourbon’s usual style – a pretty, simple sundress, except shorter, tighter, brighter, and lower-cut than Ana would ever wear, the material delineating every lush curve of her in a glowing scarlet that makes her pale skin appear even creamier. For a split second, d’Artagnan is tempted to ask where she bought it and order one for Constance, because seeing his fiancée wearing that would be worth every dollar, however ruinous the cost probably is, and then sense returns and he realises Constance would silent treatment him for months if he bought her a dress also owned by a woman he once slept with.

“Not planning to get involved?” Milady asks him, tone low and mocking.

“I tried,” he says shortly. “I suggested compromises they didn’t go for. I offered to buy them both drinks. I even pulled Louis aside and told him in a supportive voice that he should be the bigger man.”

She gives him a smirk. “Well, d’Artagnan, I can tell you with absolutely certainty that out of the men in this room, Louis is certainly not the -”

“Please stop.” He has no idea how it is that, while she should be the one embarrassed by having slept with every man currently in this bar apart from the bartender, he’s the one who keeps ending up grinding his teeth and feeling humiliated whenever she mentions it. He looks at her, and feels the sudden urge to make her off-balance as well. “Do you regret it at all?”

“What?” She arches an eyebrow at him. “You, Louis, or Athos? Is this your backdoor approach to asking me for a real comparison? Because while I won’t pretend I reject all backdoor approaches, I expect a modicum of competence in the regular way before -”

She doesn’t taunt him like this when Athos can hear, and really, that’s enough to give him a pretty good idea how to shake her. “Actually, I was talking about Athos’s brother.” He has the momentary satisfaction of seeing her whiten, but then the look she turns on him is so blackly vicious he nearly leans back from it.

“Go play in traffic, you self-righteous little bastard.” She enunciates every word perfectly clearly, and it occurs to him suddenly that he’s never heard her angry enough to speak like this before. The most he’s ever done is leave her slightly more amused with one of his insults. But she’s certainly angry now, her fury all but leaving him breathless, pinning him to his chair. “You have no idea what happened then. In fact, you barely know what’s happening now.”

“I’m…” He’s on the brink of apologising, because while he meant to piss her off it’s abundantly clear he’s succeeded much too well in that aim, but she’s already getting up to storm out.

“Anne?” Athos says, breaking off mid-sentence as he registers her expression.

“Athos,” she echoes dryly. She doesn’t look back at d’Artagnan, but he can practically feel her still vibrating with rage. “Are we confirming names now?”

“I thought that your name was Milady, though now I come to think of it, that _is_ a bit of an odd name,” Louis notes, his attention moving to Milady as well. He looks somewhat dazed as he glances up and down her body – well, mostly down. There’s a lot of bare leg. “That dress is very nice, regardless, Milady.”

“Always a gentleman, Louis,” she says, giving him a saccharine smile that turns her whole face deceptively sweet and open. “It’s too rare a quality these days.”

“Is everything all right?” Athos says in an undertone to her. He studies her for a second, concerned, than his gaze flicks to d’Artagnan, apparently reaching an accurate conclusion about what’s happened. He doesn’t look happy, and surprisingly, the unhappiness is aimed at d’Artagnan, who almost wants to protest childishly that she started it.

“As lovely as it is to see you, you can’t be here, Milady,” Louis says, managing to pull his gaze away from her legs with an effort. “Ana will be here at any moment, and you know we’re trying to make it work.” He frowns, confused. “Why _are_ you here?”

She opens her mouth, presumably about to say she’s helping out with the case, which will prolong this argument for another hour as Louis explodes about civilians apparently _sometimes_ helping on cases. Then she glances at Athos’s concerned expression and sighs. “Just grabbing a drink. I’ll be going now.”

“You don’t have to -” Athos starts to say in an undertone, because apparently he’s forgotten he’s supposed to hate her.

“Yes she does,” Louis objects. “If Ana sees her -”

“She’s already here,” Milady says, and she smirks. “But you know what, under the circumstances, I don’t think she’ll say anything.”

Athos follows her gaze to the door and closes his eyes slowly, looking like he’s barely restraining himself from swearing. D’Artagnan turns around to see it as well – and yes, Milady’s right, there’s no way Madame de Bourbon will dare criticise her husband for being in the same room as his ex-mistress right now. Aramis is holding the door open for her with a courtly gesture that only seems to be half-joking, giving her an admiring look as he does so that makes her flush with pleasure. He’s giving her child a piggy-back, too, and as d’Artagnan watches in exasperation, he leans over close to Ana so that the kid can give his mother’s cheek a messy, giggling kiss. They look like nothing so much as a television advert designed to sell upmarket casual wear to families, flushed and happy and beautiful and clearly having a wonderful time – all they need’s a nicer backdrop and some music.

“My God,” Milady says under her breath, rolling her eyes. “Well, now I’m definitely leaving.”

The reunion that follows is so awkward it’s almost physically painful. Louis swings wildly between effusive greetings and bombarding his wife with apologies and excuses about Milady’s presence, Ana can’t seem to decide if she should be guilty, irritated, happy, or merely coolly pleasant to everyone, little Louis is trying to excitedly tell his father about his new best friend Aramis, Athos is splitting his furious and disapproving glare between his two friends, and Aramis is trying to accept Louis’s gratitude for keeping an eye on his wife and child without making it apparent that he’s had his eye on her for much longer than this has been going on. D’Artagnan supposes it’s a good thing Louis is too oblivious to see Aramis and Ana’s connection, but for some reason that makes it all even more awkward as everyone tries to avoid each other’s gazes as if they’re worried that will give the game away.

“D’Artagnan, I got shot at and dived head-first into broken glass, and this is still the low point of my week,” Athos tells him out the corner of his mouth, trying to keep up a fixed grin that looks much more like a grimace. “Why did you let him come here?”

“I… didn’t think it through.”

“Evidently. And what did you say to my – what did you say to Milady?” If possible, Athos’s expression darkens further.

“I didn’t think that through either,” d’Artagnan says, evasively. He’s fairly sure she wants him dead. From the look of it, Athos is close to wanting the same. He has no fucking clue what’s going on there, but while Athos seems to be free to say whatever he likes to or about his ex-wife, apparently no one else has that right. He definitely mis-stepped.

“Would it be fair to say thinking in general is not your specialty?” Milady asks, appearing beside Athos and demonstrating again her uncanny ability to hear anything said about her. D’Artagnan really hopes she hasn’t bugged him again. Her rage does seem to have somewhat cooled, but it’s there in the glint of her cold smile.

“I thought you left,” Athos says, the hint of a question in it. 

“I was heading out, but then Porthos called me with a message for you – since you don’t have a phone right now, and all.” She twists a lock of hair between her fingers, affecting embarrassment, but drops the pretence in moments. Her tone turns serious as she says, “Apparently, you can only hold Sofia and Francesco for a few days, four at most. Their lawyer’s insistent about that. Don’t know if you remember her, the one from Vadim’s case – Madame Pinault.”

“What? They tried to run,” d’Artagnan says, incredulous. He digs out his own phone and swears when he realises he has three missed calls from Porthos. Aramis probably has a few as well.

“From a large, scary-looking man advancing in a threatening manner, according to them,” Milady says dryly.

“And they accepted money to kill someone,” d’Artagnan persists, but Athos is already shaking his head.

“From us,” he says. “That makes it entrapment if we go after them for that one. I was hoping we’d find something illegal on them or in their luggage, or that we’d be able to put them at Richelieu’s house through the videos, or even that we’d get something when we ran their fingerprints.”

“Well apparently, we haven’t,” Milady says snidely.

“ _We’ve_ been trying,” d’Artagnan says, incensed. “I’ve watched hundreds of hours of Richelieu pacing and Francois the demon-cat shredding curtains looking for even a single image of our assassins, what’ve you done?”

“Apart from getting myself abducted and nearly killed?” She raises her eyebrows. “Why do you all keep forgetting this _isn’t actually my job_? Until Treville offers me dental, the scut work is entirely your domain.” She doesn’t bother to say goodbye, simply turns and leaves as quietly as she appeared, an impressive feat in such an attention-getting dress. Athos’s gaze follows her until the door’s shut behind her.

“Speaking of which, now that Louis doesn’t need guarding, you should get back to the precinct and go over everything with a fine-toothed comb,” Athos orders d’Artagnan. “There has to be something we can find to tie them to the scene. If not Richelieu, perhaps one of the other killings that have their stamp.”

They’ve been avoiding the precinct as much as possible since Rochefort made it clear he had people there, but if d’Artagnan’s going to find anything, he’ll need the station resources to do so. Not to mention it’s where Sofia and Francesco are right now, and they’ve already had one criminal in their charge murdered this week. It’s possible Rochefort will try the same again.

“Right. What’re you going to do?”

“I have some other things to deal with,” Athos says, as if that’s any sort of response at all.

“Why are you two huddled over there by yourselves?” Louis asks, looking a lot more comfortable now Milady’s gone. “I’ve just been discussing the possibility of me helping with the investigation with Detective Aramis, and he’s not _nearly_ as averse to it as -”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Athos and d’Artagnan say under their breaths at the exact same moment, and start forward to re-join the argument before Aramis lets the man turn their interrogation from Good Cop, Bad Cop into a session of Infuriated Cop, Stupid Civilian.

X_X_X_X

“Porthos says you’re a good guy,” Flea tilts her head as she surveys him. “A smart one, too. So why are you paying me to stalk your girlfriend?”

“It’s not stalking, and she’s not my girlfriend,” Athos says.

“You just said you want me to watch her hotel and take pictures of whoever she meets up with and try and follow her wherever she goes.” Flea gives him a half-smile. “Sounds a lot like stalking to me. I mean, if it’s above board, why ask me to do it?”

“None of us can follow her,” Athos explains. “She’d recognise us immediately.” Not to mention that stealth isn’t exactly their best skill. “I’d get someone else at the station to do it, but I don’t know who to trust.”

“Hmm, not trusting cops,” she says. “Maybe you _are_ a smart one. Alright then. She’s not likely to attack me if she spots me, is she?”

“No, she…” He grinds to halt, considering this. “You know what, maybe just try not to let her spot you.”

“Got it.” She smiles. “I’m good at not being seen.”

“So is she, and she’s good at seeing other people as well,” he says. “Be careful. And if she catches you, feel free to tell her right away that this is all my fault and not to take it out on you.” He wonders how exactly she’ll take it out on him when she realises he’s had someone spying on her – the possibility that she won’t ever realise is one he dismisses pretty much immediately. Flea might be good at what she does, and certainly she’s the best person he can find for this, but he’s not going to underestimate his ex-wife.

Maybe there’s nothing going on, but her evasiveness troubles him, and after the thing with the phone, he’s not willing to be caught off guard again. If she’s playing them, he needs to know. If she’s in some kind of trouble – well, besides the usual – he also needs to know.

He gives Flea a lift partway to the hotel and gives her some money before he drops her off, as well as the extra phone he bought when he got another one just for this purpose. “Send me the pictures as you take them,” he says. “Anyone she meets.”

“You want me to try and get money shots, or is fully-clothed okay?” Flea asks mischievously.

He manages not to glare at her, but it’s difficult. The horrible possibility he could receive pictures of Milady hooking up with someone else has, inevitably, already occurred to him. Obviously, for the past few nights she’s been spending most of her time with him, and spending most of that time naked and moaning. But just as obviously, her activities with him didn’t stop her from looking elsewhere when they were married, so he can’t imagine that their explicitly casual and no-strings-attached nights together will constrain her from seeking other company now. Just the thought of it makes him furiously jealous – makes him want to go up and see if she’s in her hotel room now, so he can drag her into the bed in there, pull up that little sundress she was wearing earlier and lick into her until she’s gasping and sobbing and screaming out his name, take her until she’s so sore and satiated she can’t even _think_ of sleeping with another man.

God, she brings out the worst in him. 

He should be working on the actual case. He has a sketch artist to see.

“Clothed is fine,” he tells Flea tightly.

X_X_X_X

As always, talking with Rochefort makes Milady want to go and take a shower. It’s the way he looks at her. She’s experienced a lot of reactions from men – to her body and the clothes she chooses to put on it, to start with, but also to whatever personality she’s wearing for their benefit. She’s seen everything from love, to lust, to disgust, to a tortured mix of all of those, but Rochefort’s unique somehow. The expression in his gaze is always cold, calculating, somehow impersonal, but his psychosis twists it so that he seems almost more dangerous in his dispassion, and when he gives her an approving look it feels like a slug inching its way slowly across her skin.

She doesn’t want to be like him, any more than she wants to be the petty, grasping piece of street trash Sarazin saw, or the pathetic, lying whore Thomas called her, but when Rochefort looks at her she knows that’s what he’s thinking, that she’s like him. Oh, he considers himself better than her, but he also thinks he understands her motives, what she’s capable of, what she’ll do. He thinks he knows exactly who she is, and when she sees her reflection in his eyes the picture disgusts her.

What _does_ she want to be? It’s a question she doesn’t like asking, because then she needs to come up with an answer for it. She used to want to be what Athos saw her as. The woman he viewed her as had no dark side, no edges, no cruelty, she was bright and beautiful and happy and kind and untainted by any kind of past. Maybe overseas she really will be able to leave her past behind, and him as well – but no. She’ll never really be able to leave him behind.

“I think I’ve more than adequately demonstrated the benefits of assisting me,” Rochefort says. “Did you like your signing bonus?”

“A dead body,” she says. “It’s novel, at least. If I came to work for you I imagine the Christmas bonuses would be interesting, though I might run out of cupboard space.”

She’s always been a fan of keeping her options open, but she’s decided she doesn’t want them to be _this_ open. She’s not going to shed any tears over Sarazin’s death (although he was such a large part of her life for so long, even in his absence, that it feels strange he’s dead). Still, the fact that Rochefort went so immediately to killing, instead of any subtler methods he could’ve employed, concerns her. If she helps Rochefort, then like Sarazin, she’ll know things Rochefort wishes she didn’t, and she suspects that will end up exactly the same way for her. So really he’ll want her dead either way. She won’t feel safe unless he’s in prison.

It’s no longer a question of if she’ll tell Athos, but when. He’ll overreact, she’s sure of that, probably lose his temper at her for not going to him immediately. He’ll also almost definitely end any chance of her getting useful information from Rochefort. So she’s not going to tell him yet.

She idly considers telling him in bed, where there’s a chance his anger can come out as a much more enjoyable type of passion, but thinking about sex while Rochefort is staring at her with that thin smile is just weird.

“So we’re in agreement, then?” Rochefort says. “You’ll help me? And yourself, of course.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” Milady says, musingly, propping her chin on her hand. “I’ve been considering it, and I just don’t think you have enough to offer me. Not enough buck for a bang, so to speak.” She wants to force Rochefort to show his hand. _Does_ he still have evidence on her, with Sarazin dead? Can he get more?

“Sarazin is dealt with. Don’t pretend that’s not a relief to you.”

“You started strongly out of the gate, that’s true, but I’ve always thought the big finale was the most important part. At this point, everything I want from you, I’ve got.”

“I told you, there’s no way your friends will get enough to be able to arrest me. Whereas I can assure you, if you follow my plan, you’ll easily fulfil your deal with the DA’s office.”

Milady shrugs. “I just don’t think it’s worth screwing over everyone I know for your dubious promises. Not to mention disrespecting my dead boss. Maybe it’ll be more difficult to arrest you than some patsy you set up with incriminating evidence, but I’ll take my chances with the method that doesn’t involve committing crimes under the noses of an entire team of detectives.”

This is the moment where if he has something, he should produce it with a smug smile. Wave it in her face.

Instead he says silkily, “It’s not betraying them that bothers you, is it? Or not all of them, anyway. It’s what that charming ex-husband of yours will think if he finds out.” 

She freezes. “Excuse me?”

“Once that other detective mentioned it, it was easy enough to look up Detective de la Fere’s marital history.” His tone reeks of unconvincing sympathy. “And by doing so, fill in one of the few remaining gaps in your history. Spending over a year playing housewife in a country town… well, women have done far worse for millions of dollars. Walking away without fighting for a single cent? Less understandable. Except to me, because I know about love.”

“Don’t tell me, you also know every single line from _Love Actually_.”

He ignores her, and now his gaze has gone from unnerving to actually terrifying, it’s so intense. “You’d do anything at all for his good opinion, wouldn’t you? For his affection. But once he realises you’ve been spying on him for me to save your own skin… I can’t imagine he’ll think well of you after _that_. And when he knows you stood by and happily let Sarazin die to save your own skin…”

She recognises this tactic, since it’s one she frequently uses herself, and one that a few people have attempted to use on her. If you find out something wrong the person has done, or even just something they think of as wrong, it’s easy to persuade them to do some small, harmless thing to cover that up. Only then do they realise the act wasn’t small or harmless, but that’s alright, because there’s _another_ thing they can do to cover up both their sins. And so on, and so on. It takes people quite a while to realise there will always be just one more thing, and by then, they’ve done so much they have no way out. It explains why he would say he had evidence against her but not produce it now, since it was only ever to get her to take that first step. He claimed that first task was only to watch the others: harmless, no big deal, easy to rationalise. Then after she did it, it turned out to be much worse than she could have imagined, to involve a murder, in fact. This next step will probably be just as deceptively harmless.

However, he’s acting on two wrong assumptions. The first is that she can be easily used – Armand would shake his head in disgust at that. You don’t play a player, or at least not unless you’re a lot better at the game than them. The second is his belief that she’s worried about losing Athos’s good opinion, when in fact she’s well aware that evaporated half a decade ago. Their divorce papers don’t bother to list why they divorced except as ‘irreconcilable differences’, since she signed everything away immediately, so Rochefort doesn’t realise that there’s nothing she can ever do to top that first betrayal. She could have killed Sarazin herself and still not gotten as strong a reaction, because back then he trusted her and she annihilated that trust, and now he doesn’t trust her at all. Athos will probably just glare and shake his head at her living down to his expectations when she tells him about these meetings. 

“That’s what real love is,” Rochefort says, and now he’s gazing beyond her, slipping into a reverie. “You do anything at all for them, to help them, to be near them, but they don’t always appreciate it or understand it. Sometimes the best thing you can do to protect what you have is to lie to them. After all, what matters is the results.”

That it’s a thought she’s had more than once herself only makes it more uncomfortable to hear, but she buries that thought, and instead decides to fall in line. Purely to hear what he really wants from her, of course. Rochefort’s creepy outlook on relationships isn’t one she wants to hear more about.

“A closet romantic. Who knew. So what do you need from me, then?” she asks, propping her chin on her hand and leaning forward as if she wants to be as close to him as possible, all but batting her lashes at the man, pretending to be charmed by his words. To him, it will look like seduction, but in fact it’s just regular manipulation – she doubts she can seduce him whatever she does (and she really, really doesn’t want to), but if he thinks that she believes she can, he’ll underestimate her slightly more. Rochefort likes to think he’s the smartest in the room. It’s best for her if he keeps thinking it.

He proves her right when his cold smile widens and he reaches out to slightly-viciously twist a dangling curl of hair around his fingers. He’s trying to make her think her seduction is working on him – it’s all becoming quite recursive, _I know you know I know you know_ , etcetera.

“Luca Sestini,” he says.

“Oh,” she says thoughtfully. He’s a pretty good candidate as a fake suspect for killing Armand. The two of them went to university together, spent thirty years layering a pretence of friendship over their abject hatred over each other, and then spent ten years openly despising each other. “He’s in Italy at present. Rather difficult to convict or frame a man from this distance, isn’t it?”

“He’s coming back for Richelieu’s will reading next week. The investigation hasn’t been publicised, so he’s unlikely to avoid it.” He smirks at her. “Tell me he’s not a much better suspect than me. They’ll find scores of proof he hated Richelieu.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “And how exactly can I help with this? You have your own people on the police force, Sestini won’t let me get close to him, and it’s not like the detectives on the case will listen if I go ‘oh, sorry, I don’t think it’s Rochefort after all’. But clearly you think I can do something.” Killing Sarazin is a pretty extreme step to take if she’s not vital to whatever plan he has.

“My police friends aren’t trusted by _your_ police friends.”

“They’re not my friends, and I assure you, they don’t trust me much at all. Not even Athos.”

“But they have been showing you evidence,” he says. “Assuming those idiot detectives can ever break our friends in the cells enough to get the passwords to their bank information, they’ll learn the account number the money for Richelieu’s assassination was paid through.”

She calls them idiots a lot, whether it’s in her thoughts, behind their backs, or to their faces, so she wonders why him saying it annoys her. His casual tone when talking about her boss’s death doesn’t exactly please her either. Still, she doesn’t let any of that show in her face, still smiling at him flirtatiously. “And that number leads to you? For such a clever man, that’s a little careless of you.”

“It leads nowhere,” he snaps, before remembering they’re supposed to be on the same side and forcing his face back to that oily smile. “But with a couple of little tweaks, it could lead to Sestini, or at least to an account I’ve set up in his name. Incontrovertible proof of his involvement. And trust me, they’ll find more proof, when they start looking.”

“Tweaks,” she says thoughtfully. “Go on.”

“I have people in my employ who can hack the online information and change the number there, and I have friends at the station who can change anything they put in computer files or logs,” he says. “But if those detectives have their own notes and any hard files they haven’t stored yet, and those show a different number… well, you see how that could be inconvenient.”

“So basically you want me to be there when they get into the banking information and make a note of any physical locations of the information,” she summarises. “Then I can steal notebooks or files and either destroy them or change them to match the number you want.”

“I’ll also need you to pass on the banking information and passwords as soon as possible, so my computer experts can ensure it changes online as fast as possible.” He reaches out again, but this time instead of winding her hair around his hand, he uses his index finger to tilt her chin up slightly, then to idly pull down her ribbon necklace just an inch to see her scar. Much like Sarazin, he seems to like the look of it. “One well-timed text, a few policemen’s pockets picked, a couple of quick alterations with a pen, and you’ll never spend so much as a day in jail. Guaranteed success. It seems like a good deal, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” she manages. “It does.”

His fingernail scrapes lightly across her scar. It feels like a violation. She doesn’t know why it always bothers her so intensely when people touch her there – no, actually, maybe she does. It’s the memory of how weak she was the day she got it, struggling uselessly against that wire, unable to breathe, eyes wide and dry, panicking, limbs flailing and flopping, body barely hers anymore. Pain and fear stripped away her layers and left her raw, and when people touch the scar, she feels raw again, and that only got worse after everything with Athos. That openness hasn’t always been unpleasant (Athos has kissed that scar before), but the _scrape, scrape, scrape_ of Rochefort against her right now is horrific, abrading her.

“None of this will convince them that you’re not behind it,” she tells him, trying to mask her discomfort.

“I don’t care what they believe, I care who goes to prison over it,” Rochefort says coolly. He pauses. “Out of interest, how did your friends persuade the assassins to come back into the country? It must have taken a lot of money.”

“We got Louis de Bourbon to pay to have himself killed,” she says. “It was too much for them to resist, apparently.” Greed makes fools out of people. God knows, it’s done it to her a time or two.

Something flickers in his face, too fast for her to entirely identify. She doesn’t know why, but she can tell what she just said interested him more than anything else they’ve discussed.

She sits for a long time after he disappears, ignoring her now cold, somewhat scummy coffee. The place is bustling, so most of the people whose phones were hit by the little device this time are long gone, but there’s still the occasional curse as barista or another slow customer goes to check their phone and realises it’s busted. She left hers in her room, this time, when she spotted him in the street below, but she took one of her bugs just in case he forgot to use it. If he’d even waited until partway through their conversation, she would have had stored audio on her phone and online. He hadn’t, of course. From the way he’d paused and his hand had moved to his pocket every time someone lingered near them, he even brought a spare one of those little black boxes to deploy if he started to suspect she was trying to record him by hiring someone to bring in a bug or audio recorder after he blew all the nearby tech out – which would’ve been quite difficult, given this was a surprise meeting for her. She should probably be flattered he’s willing to spend an absolute fortune to force her cooperation without risking himself.

None of what he’d said gives her anything useful, anyway. Maybe he’s lying and the bank account does lead back to him, but she can’t count on it. She’ll have to meet him again, she thinks, and see if he gives away anything more. And then she can tell Athos – hopefully having something useful will take the edge off his anger a bit.

It _would_ be a good deal, she knows, if Rochefort meant a word of it. But she’s backstabbed enough people in her time to recognise another professional at work. Plus, there’s Armand, and Athos, and herself, too, and really, just a lot of complicated and messy reasons why she’d rather take the risk of jail than help Rochefort.

She frowns, feeling that shiver down her spine again. She’s been noticing it most of the day, but wondering if she’s just paranoid. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s assumed someone’s tailing her and been wrong. Her life over the past fifteen years hasn’t been of the kind that inspires calmness and the belief that no one will ever harm you.

No, someone’s definitely watching her. She glances across the street and spots the same woman she saw while out shopping earlier (it was that or go help those morons, and she doesn’t feel in a particularly helpful mood towards d’Artagnan right now). Milady noted her at the time because she stood out in the upscale street, but then she’d identified her as a pickpocket after a quick examination and left her alone. After all, once upon a time she’d skulked in the fancier parts of town for exactly the same reason, and while she didn’t plan to let the woman take anything from her she wasn’t going to get her arrested or thrown out of the area either.

But no pickpocket would follow someone this far. So either she’s attracted a stalker, another kidnapper, or someone’s having her watched. Rochefort? It’s a possibility. If it is Rochefort, she should probably pretend not to notice the woman. A part of her wants to send someone to give the woman a coffee just to show off that she can’t be spied on that easily, but that’s short-term smugness instead of planning. Besides, it could be someone else having her followed. Treville, maybe? It would be smart of him to show some caution – he must at least have considered the possibility she’ll run. She should make sure before she gives away an advantage.

She leaves the cold coffee behind, and heads out into the street, wondering idly if she should lead the woman somewhere fun. Maybe the zoo, or to the opera. She looks like the kind of person who would hate opera even more than Milady does.

X_X_X_X

Scut work is a very accurate description of what d’Artagnan’s doing right now.

First, there was another view of the highlights of all those hours of video on Richelieu’s home. Before this whole thing, he really liked cats – his family’s home in Gascony always had half a dozen barn cats, ratters, who’d come over for some titbits and a pat. But he’s watched so many hours of Francois by now that he honestly thinks he never wants to see another cat again. And cat videos on the internet are clearly ruined forever, as well.

Now he’s going through the long list of items found on their assassins again, on the off chance someone accidentally skipped over ‘hand gun’ or ‘vial of poison’. The cops who processed them were thorough. Porthos was there to make sure of that. The assassins had even been strip searched, and all distinguishing features noted, so on the off chance Francesco accidentally flashed the birthmark on his upper back at a previous crime scene they’ve got him, but d’Artagnan’s not going to bet on that one.

For professional assassins, their luggage seems painfully boring. They must have weapons and drug suppliers in the countries they work in, and so not bother to carry it with them. But their packing is otherwise pretty extensive. He’s just finished the list of toiletries and is now on medicine. Painkillers, the pill, condoms, a half-finished pack of antibiotics, bandages, tweezers, more condoms, antiseptic.

Wait. Antibiotics. An idea occurs to him.

D’Artagnan starts to type a search into google, then swears as he remembers that his computer is broken right now. IT have checked it out remotely and told him there’s no problem, but for some reason every word he types comes out as garbled nonsense. He’ll have to get Aramis to take a look at it sometime. He has to pull out his phone and look it up on there instead.

Then he returns to the comprehensive list of moles, scars, tattoos, and birthmarks from before.

“Porthos?” he calls out.

“Yeah?”

“I think I might have something. These antibiotics -”

“Already tried,” Porthos says flatly. “There’s nothing on the box to indicate where they bought them, just like all the other stuff. Don’t think they bothered to get a real prescription for it, somehow.”

“Right,” d’Artagnan says. “But I think I know what they bought them for.” Porthos raises an eyebrow. “Cat bites get infected really, really easily, and really quickly, too. Aramis told me Adele nearly lost her finger to Francois – that’s probably what he meant, since cats don’t normally bite off appendages.”

“You think Francois bit one of them as well and it got infected?” Porthos considers this. “Alright, sounds about as likely as anything else. That cat does attack pretty much everything in the area, and they wouldn’t’ve killed it for getting in their way, because a murdered cat would’ve made it obvious Richelieu didn’t die of natural causes. But the cat’s not gonna have blood on it’s face from something that long ago.”

“Right, but the reason the bites get infected so easily is because cats bite really _deeply_ ,” d’Artagnan says, smile starting. “It takes them a long time to heal, even longer if they’re infected. And this report has a few little wounds on Francesco’s legs.”

Porthos starts to grin. “Poor Lemay. You want to make him take a dental impression of that psycho of a cat and compare it to the pattern of pinpricks on an assassin’s legs?”

“We’ve made him do weirder things.”

“Yeah, but we haven’t actually put him in physical danger since that thing with the soup,” Porthos says. “Still, I like this idea. Now we just have to get permission to confiscate a dead man’s pet cat as evidence.”


	14. Straight Shooter

It’s an excellent photo, considering it’s through two sets of glass windows, from across a street, and taken with quite a cheap phone. Athos can see the curve of his ex-wife’s smile, the coquettishness to the way she’s tilting her head, the dark curl of her hair around the other man’s fingers. He was worried about discovering she’s sleeping with someone else, and he was worried about finding out she was screwing them over, and now he faces the unattractive prospect he could be looking at a picture of both of those things.

She can’t have been working with Rochefort from the start, surely. That makes no sense. But fuck, when does anything she do ever make sense before the big reveal?

He starts and slips the phone into his pocket as Porthos appears beside him. “Hey, you good to fetch Milady?”

“She can get a taxi,” he says shortly.

Porthos side-eyes him. “Yeah, ‘course she can, but you picking her up is gonna be faster at this time of day. Is everything okay between you two?”

“ _Fine_.” He closes his eyes for a moment, knowing he just snarled that way too viciously to be remotely convincing. He’s going to have to go get her. Well, he supposes it will give him a chance to speak to her in private. He knows instinctively that he’ll get more out of her by himself than he will with an audience. Whether what he gets from her will contain any kind of truth – that’s another question. “I’ll go get her, then,” he says, just as shortly.

The drive just gives more time for his anger to build, not helped by the urge to check the picture on his phone at every traffic light and intersection. Unsurprisingly, staring at it doesn’t change what it is, and it doesn’t make him feel any better. By the time he’s knocking on her hotel room he’s practically trembling with rage and hurt.

She pulls him inside the room before he can get a word out. “I need to talk to you,” she says, words tripping over each other. “I’m being followed. A blonde woman, probably a petty thief of some kind. I need you to find out if it’s Treville or one of your idiot friends. If it’s not, then it could be Rochefort -”

“It’s not Rochefort,” he bites off the words.

It takes only a second for her eyes to widen, then narrow. “I see,” she says coolly. “Your idea, then, I take it? Was it the conversation about running the other day? Do you really think that woman could stop me? That _you_ could stop me? I’ve been helping you and your idiot friends, and _this_ is how -”

“You’ve been helping yourself,” he says flatly. “What I don’t know is whether you’ve been helping Rochefort as well.” He holds up the phone like an accusation, and his words contain more of that. “You two seem quite… close.”

“It’s a picture of us having coffee, not fucking on the table, Athos.” She catches his tone and looks even more furious at the implication. “And frankly even the idea is enough to make me nauseous. I can be in the same vicinity as a man and not actually be screwing him, you know.”

“Not in my experience.”

She looks like she’s barely restraining himself from slapping him again. Instead, she says tightly, “He was suggesting the idea of us working together, making a deal that benefits us both. Which I have no intention of doing.”

“And he looks so upset by your refusal,” he says sarcastically.

“Well of course I didn’t fucking tell _him_ that.”

“Keeping your options open?” His tone is vicious, and her wince could be from that, but he thinks it’s more likely that he hit the nail on the head.

Of course, she fights back anyway. “Trying to find out something useful!” She gives him a disdainful look. “If you haven’t noticed, for every two steps forward we make in this case, we take one step back. I was trying to fast track it a bit more. As you so helpfully reminded me last week, I’m the person here who’s working with a time limit. You’re not.”

“You lied to me,” he says furiously, then corrects himself. “To us.”

“I was going to tell you.”

“Really,” he says, cutting. “When?”

“When I got information you needed to know.” She still looks annoyed at him, and he thinks she has absolutely no right to act like he’s the unreasonable one here, when she’s been meeting up with Rochefort and lying about it. And he still doesn’t even fucking know if she’s telling the truth. She might be working with Rochefort, she might be trying to double-cross him, and he has no clue and no way to find out, and either way she might end up like Sarazin.

“You didn’t tell me about Rochefort coming to speak to you. Trying to make a _deal_ with you. You didn’t think that was information we could’ve used?” He can hear his voice rising, steadily losing control, steadily getting more angry and betrayed. He rakes his hand through his hair, trying not to pace, trying not to shake her until her teeth rattle. He feels a surge of guilt even at the thought, but for God’s sake, he’s so _sick_ of her lying to him. Five years ago he hurt her, and she has every right to hurt him back, but endangering herself and the case by making backroom deals with Rochefort isn’t the right way to go about that.

“I didn’t know how you’d react. I thought it wouldn’t go well.”

“No shit. Guess what, next time, _tell me anyway!_ ” By now he must look almost crazed, hair sticking up, eyes red. “You can’t keep doing this. You can’t lie to me continually, and then get angry that I don’t give you the benefit of the doubt. You can’t keep things from me until they explode and then decide it’s my fault for reacting poorly to them. And you can’t fucking act like it’s unreasonable for me not to trust you when _you’ve never trusted me either_.”

“I trusted you,” she says grimly. “And look where that -”

“ _No!_ You didn’t trust me, and that’s a problem that was there right from the start, right from the first fucking day,” he snaps. “You didn’t trust me enough to tell me your name, your past, the danger you were in … you didn’t trust me enough to tell me _anything_.”

“That’s not fair. You would have arrested me, or at least divorced me.” She’s visibly taken aback, shock in her eyes, but he doesn’t let that make him merciful.

“You don’t know that, you can’t, because _I_ don’t even know what I would have done,” he all but spits the words in her face. “You took away any chance we had of finding out. If you didn’t think I could deal with what was going on in your life, then you should never have involved me in it. And if you thought I could, you should’ve told me everything, and let me make my own choices, instead of keeping me in the dark just so you could pretend to be someone you’re not.”

There’s a long, terrible pause. Her shocked eyes narrow to slits. He can see the fury in them, the hurt, the way she wants to launch herself at him with claws and teeth out like a wild animal. If she does, he’ll shove her hard against the wall, and then they’ll fight their way to the bed or the floor, and then they’ll slam their bodies against each other like there’s nothing between them but raw need, and then she’ll be panting up at the ceiling and he’ll be burying his cries in her neck, and they can pretend this conversation never happened. Or at least pretend it was just another petty argument, instead of five years of raw pain and hurt pouring out of him for her perusal.

Instead, she just stares at him for a long minute, a minute where he tries not to act first, tries to suppress this greedy, violent need, so different from the sweet, simple desire that she once invoked. Then she says coolly, “Noted.”

It’s nothing like what he expected, and he almost wishes she had attacked him instead of shutting down like that. “Right,” he says, clearing his throat, trying to return to civility, but he can’t stop himself leaning in slightly to force her to keep her eyes on him. It’s a petty little power play, but he doesn’t care.

She stretches ostentatiously, causing his eyes to snap downwards, and her to smirk at him, already back in control of this interaction. He despises the smugness in her eyes. “Then you should probably also know that he killed Sarazin as a favour to me.”

He doesn’t yell at her: he’s quite proud of that. It takes several deep breaths to achieve this feat. “He killed a man for you? I suppose I should be grateful you only ever asked me for jewellery.”

“I didn’t ask him for it. He said he’d take care of my ‘Sarazin issue’ to prove his good faith, so we could work together.” She shrugs, so uncaring he wishes he were capable of being sickened by her. “I assumed he meant he’d blackmail Sarazin or threaten him, not kill him.”

“Really. So it never crossed your mind that when he said ‘take care of’ he meant ‘murder’. Somehow I find that hard to believe.”

She examines the silver bracelet she’s wearing closely, and doesn’t reply for a while. When she does, it isn’t a response to his comment, but a return to what she was saying. “Rochefort initially claimed Sarazin had evidence against me, evidence of other crimes, ones the deal with the DA’s office doesn’t cover.”

“Why didn’t you include all of your crimes in the deal when you made it?”

“A few reasons,” she says casually. “Firstly, I wasn’t sure they’d still make the deal. Secondly, I didn’t think there _was_ any evidence of anything else I might allegedly have done – in fact, since he killed Sarazin so quickly instead of holding onto that supposed leverage, now I think Rochefort was probably bluffing, using that to get me to do favours for him so he’d have me under his thumb. Thirdly, if I can’t follow through on helping catch Richelieu’s killer, they’ll charge me with everything they have, so the last thing I wanted to do was risk doubling my jailtime. And lastly… if he did have evidence, some of it might be… quite… private…” Her voice loses any hint of insouciance by the end, and becomes embarrassed and defensive instead, uncharacteristically so.

It takes him a moment to parse this, and then he understands. “Photos or videos of you in your sex worker days,” he says dully. He already finds horrifying images flooding his mind. Given some of the things they’ve done together in the past, he doesn’t want to imagine what kind of acts she’d consider it too humiliating to have other people know about, but his mind helpfully provides suggestions. He clears his throat and says, “I wouldn’t have thought -”

“What, that it would bother me?” She gives him a tight little smile. “Normally, it probably wouldn’t. But given that the lead on my case is my ex-husband… yes, it would bother me. Happy?”

“Not even slightly.”

He has the vicious, unreasoning desire as he felt before when he considered the possibility Flea would send him pictures of his ex-wife with another man. He wants to wind her hair around his hand and make a fist, tug her in to him, take her mouth so thoroughly with his own that it wipes away every other man who’s kissed her, use his fingers on her and in her until she whimpers and pleads and swears in sobs she doesn’t remember a single one of them, erase every other touch and taste but his own. Until he’s stripped every layer of coolness and disinterest away from her and left nothing but raw desperation. Until he feels like he owns her. Until she moans and weeps her surrender. The civilised part of him recognises this desire as stupid, petty, primitive machismo, but the civilised part of him’s never very close to the surface around her.

“Exactly. Now imagine actually _seeing_ them, and tell me you’re not relieved I made that call.”

He can’t tell her that, but he’s damned if he’s going to act like she did the right thing here. “We’ll need to go through everything Rochefort said to you, but we should do that with the others,” he says instead, changing the subject.

“If we must.”

“This better be the last bombshell, Anne,” he warns her.

She hesitates.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“It’s nothing to do with the case,” she says. “It’s about… us.”

“There is no us,” he growls, which is a blatant lie.

She gives it the eye roll it deserves. “Be that as it may. It’s about what happened with Thomas back then.”

His first horrifying thought is that they’re still sneaking around together, but she said ‘back then’, so it seems unlikely, even besides the fact that they live hours away from each other. He runs through a few other scenarios – her having been in love with Thomas, her dating or sleeping with Thomas starting from before their relationship, even her having an illicit love child with his brother… the possibilities are endless.

“Is it something you _need_ to tell me for some reason?” he asks, voice rough, because even if he’s angry at her right now, in the long run he’s even angrier at himself, and if it will help her he’s willing to listen to whatever this is even though he desperately doesn’t want to. “Will it accomplish anything? Give you that closure you keep mentioning?”

She hesitates, then says, “No, no, and no. Honestly, I’d rather never talk about it, since I don’t think it would fix anything at this fucking point. It’s been five years. It’s old news. I dealt with it.”

“Is it likely to make me feel better or worse?”

“…Worse. Almost definitely worse.”

“Then this particular information you can keep to yourself,” he informs her, although he admits to himself he may need a few extra drinks to stop himself occasionally dwelling on what horrible truth it could have been. “I’m sick to death of discussing our past. We’re supposed to have moved on. We have moved on. I’ve moved on.” Except, of course, for hating himself, and sometimes hating her, and everything else. 

“Right,” she says, rolling her eyes again. “Good job.” She grabs her purse. “Shall we go, then?”

X_X_X_X

This is a cruel and unusual punishment, she decides, though she isn’t sure if she means having to share a car ride with the eternally cheerful and chatty Aramis, or the goal at the end of the trip.

She’s fairly sure it’s intended as a punishment for Aramis as well, probably for his lack of professionalism with the lovely Ana de Bourbon. Oh, Athos had come up with reasons for it to be the two of them – Porthos and d’Artagnan were the ones who came up with the lead, so it’s only fair that Aramis look into it further, and she’s the only one who’s actually met Francois before so her presence might calm him down as they transport him. But as reasonable as they’d sounded, they were really just excuses to get her out of his vicinity. He’s furious with her, and not exactly hiding it well.

On the way out, she’d said his name quietly, more like a question than a farewell, and he’d responded with a curt “unless you have something else to tell me, I’ll see you tomorrow” which seems to pretty much say everything. She supposes she’s staying in her hotel tonight – well, good. She got the room for a reason, after all, and she doesn’t want to be around Athos when he’s in such a bad mood anyway. If he thinks withholding sex is likely to make her regret her actions, well, he doesn’t know her at all. It’s his loss every bit as much as hers. She has hands. She’ll manage.

But… the fact that their brief truce is over. That hurts her. She wishes it didn’t, but while she’s always known it couldn’t last, she’d been hoping it would hold until she left. Then they could kiss each other goodbye like well-adjusted adults, a comforting lie that feels much better than the raw truth of the situation. She wanted that. She didn’t want it enough to work with Rochefort, but she still wanted it.

And now Aramis is humming. Yes, this is definitely a punishment. He doesn’t seem annoyed with her, though. None of them liked the news she’s been meeting with Rochefort, but they seemed to take it as confirmation they were heading in the right direction, and they found the idea that Rochefort didn’t think he had enough cops on his payroll to definitively avoid arrest a relief. Unlike Athos, they didn’t find it a betrayal, because they never expected better of her – somehow that stings nearly as much as the realisation that Athos apparently had.

For God’s sake, it was two meetings, that was it. Sure, it’d led to the death of Sarazin, but she hadn’t _known_ it would, not for sure, and he’s hardly much of a loss. It’s not like she’d asked for any of this. D’Artagnan is the only one who was openly dubious about her explanation of why she’d been meeting with Rochefort, but she’s sure they’re all going to watch her even more closely from now on, just in case.

“So who gets Francois once Richelieu’s will clears?” Aramis wonders as they pull up. “Or will he just stay here?”

“No idea,” she says. The possibility Armand left everything he owns to Francois has crossed her mind – it seems like just the sort of thing he _would_ do, purely to spite everyone – but she doubts he would make a will so likely to get shredded in court. Still, he’ll have made some provision for the cat, of course he will. Armand planned for everything.

“No chance of you getting Francois?”

“If he left me that damn cat, I’m buying a sack and a couple of bricks, and going on a fun little excursion to the nearest river,” Milady says bluntly.

“You can’t be serious.” Aramis gives her a look.

“No, you’re right. I’d be too worried it would claw its way out and come back for me later on. I’d get a vet to put it down.”

She has a lingering affection for Armand, of course she does, even though he’d be the first to say that’s unnecessarily soppy and overemotional. She has no lingering affection for the hell-beast. Of course, although she’s enjoying the horrified look on Aramis’s face right now, she probably wouldn’t actually _kill_ the cat – but she certainly wouldn’t bring it into her home. Too many of her clothes are designer, besides anything else. She wonders if there are pet hotels that let you pay by the year.

Still, Armand knew her better than that. He’d never risk leaving the creature to her.

“You can’t really betray a man’s dying request like that,” Aramis insists sanctimoniously. “Last requests are sacrosanct. Even ones from people like Richelieu deserve to be honoured. I could never do that.”

“Please, as if you care about Armand’s wishes. The two of you despised each other. You still hate him now he’s dead, don’t you?”

“Even with someone I hated as much as him, if he’d asked something from me as a dying wish, I’d do it. And you have to admit I had valid reasons for holding a grudge against Richelieu,” Aramis points out.

“Do I? You slept with the man’s girlfriend, of course he hated you.” She leans back and studies him through half-closed eyes. “I don’t know why you hated him, though. Was it just so you could justify it?”

“Of course not! You’re not really going to pretend that the way he treated Adele was at all acceptable, are you?” Aramis asks incredulously.

“Oh, compared to the gentlemanly way you treated her?” Milady says, a little scornful.

“What he did was financial abuse.” Aramis looks disgusted with her and with Richelieu. “He used money to control her.”

“It was mostly his money,” she replies lightly, though she knows even as she’s saying it that she’s being a hypocrite. It had been mostly Athos’s money that he’d cut her off from when they divorced, and that hadn’t changed the fact that it had left her desperate and without any options.

Of course, Milady was always going to be worse off in that situation than someone like Adele. Back before she met Athos, she’d been changing names fairly often, and she hadn’t had access to Richelieu’s contacts to get convincing papers. So Anne de Breuil hadn’t had bank accounts, and she’d been paid under the table for the most part. Then she had Athos’s accounts, which he generously said to treat as shared accounts, and so she’d just paid everything into them and taken out whatever she needed. Of course, less than an hour after seeing her with Thomas, he’d cut her off from their accounts as well as the house, cancelling her cards and changing the online access. She has no idea if that was legal, but even if she’d been willing to fight for it at the time (and she wasn’t), it wasn’t like she had lawyers on call. In fact, the sum total of what she had at the time was a bit of cash in her purse, the outfit she was wearing, and a nice pair of earrings. Thomas was certainly never going to give her the last month of pay he owed her, that was for sure. She’d been homeless again, falling back into a life she thought she’d left behind years ago, and it was a shock to remember how difficult, dirty, exhausting and unsafe homelessness was. She hadn’t even had a car to sleep in. And Thomas’s threats were still hanging over her head, so she knew if she stayed in the same place too long and under the same name, there was every chance she’d wind up in jail for old crimes or dead from Sarazin’s dirty cops.

She slept on a park bench in Pinon for a little while because she couldn’t afford to get anywhere else and was in too much shock to try, but it was winter, and she got sick surprisingly quickly. She had no way to get medication, no way to even get food – she’d gotten softer in her years of relatively comfortable living, and twenty-somethings didn’t bounce back from harsh conditions as well as teenagers did. Then Athos’s partner Remi came and found her, and offered her his couch for as long as it took to sort out her plans. She accepted gratefully, although she did ask him not to tell Athos. She stayed a while, sick with flu, exhausted and barely moving until she recovered. She knew she needed to get to the city, which was even more dangerous for the homeless but at least had jobs available, and old clients who might be willing to help her out. She asked Remi if she could borrow the money for a bus ticket, but he suggested she could earn it instead, talked about how much she owed him for the place to stay and the food, and got a little too pushy in his attempts to convince her to pay up what he seemed to think she’d promised. 

She had no money, nowhere to go, and she didn’t want to rob someone or try and turn tricks while in Pinon, not when it would inevitably get back to her husband. She didn’t want to go back to sleeping in the park for the same reason. She remembers thinking that while what she’d done to Athos was inexcusable, he could at least have left her with enough money that she wasn’t homeless and starving. She doubted it was malicious or deliberate, it was probably just that he hadn’t thought of it – to Athos, money was like air, it was just always there, and so the consequences of leaving her with nothing but the clothes on her back wouldn’t have crossed his mind, but that didn’t change the results.

So she’d gone back to the home she shared with Athos, and she’d stared up at it, thinking about the small emergency stash of money she’d kept in a drawer in case either of them needed cash quickly for some reason. She thought about knocking, about just asking Athos if she could have it, saying it would be enough to get out of his life entirely the way he seemed to want. But the idea of talking to Athos was awful, so instead she’d followed her instincts (or perhaps old habits) and just gone in, hoping he’d be out or asleep and she could be in and out in minutes, grab some cash, grab some changes of clothes, maybe even grab her jewellery – or just anything valuable she could get her hands on that he wasn’t likely to miss. She didn’t even have to pick the lock to get in, not that she had the tools to do that on her – the spare key for the new locks was in the exact same hiding spot they’d always used.

He was there, though, and he was drunk, and he came out of the room they used to share to find her going through a chest of drawers and stealing the jewellery he’d given her when he loved her. And the rest… well, the rest was history.

So yes, Milady knows the situation Aramis is describing, rather better than he does, as a matter of fact.

“Then when he found out about me, the way he reacted was excessive,” Aramis persists, still righteously furious, dragging her back to their actual conversation, instead of the horrible flashbacks it’s giving her. “Who knows what he might have done if she hadn’t gotten out of there.”

It’s a good thing Athos isn’t here. She’s not the only one who would see their own break-up reflected in this sordid little story, and she’s not the only one who would be made incredibly uncomfortable by it. If anything, this would probably be worse for him. After all, he’s much more susceptible to shame than she is, and Aramis isn’t subtle about who he considers to be in the wrong in his version of the story. It would be amusing to watch him try and twist her and Athos’s story to be something different, try and make it so his friend is completely innocent for similar or even worse actions to those that supposedly made Richelieu scum of the earth, trying to bend logic to serve emotion.

“Armand was… a complicated man,” she says eventually. It’s the truth. She can remember him over a year ago when he found out about Adele and Aramis, how he hadn’t let a single sign of hurt show on his face or in his words, only anger, how she’d been quietly convinced he was hurt anyway. Whether it was his feelings that were hurt or simply his pride, she has no idea, though. “He did bad things, yes. But he also did a lot of good.”

Aramis scoffs.

“He _did_ ,” she says, rolling her eyes. She’s a little amused by the thought of how appalled Armand would be at this – her trying to defend him to a man he loathed. “The position you’re in, you just saw more of his bad side than most. I don’t think he was a terrible person. Just a very ruthless, pragmatic one.”

He still looks doubtful, but he changes the subject. “After we’ve picked up Francois, do you think you could take him back to the precinct? I want to drop in on Ana, see how she’s doing. Louis being in danger must have been hard on her.”

“What, so to help with that you’d like to be hard _in_ her?” She shakes her head dismissively. “No, I can’t take Francois. No sane taxi driver’s going to let that thing in his cab, not once he sees the cat carrier shaking like it’s holding a velociraptor.”

Well, so much for her belief that they were going to watch her even more closely. Unless this is a test of some kind, Aramis appears to really be suggesting she take their only lead and head off with it on her own. Admittedly, the lead in question is a cat that seems to need an exorcism, but it’s still a lead. She could lose the cat or swap it for another one or just disappear. Of course, she can’t think of a motive for her to do that, since if this case goes badly she goes to jail, but for all they know she could have plans of which they’re entirely unaware. If she really was working for Rochefort, she could easily screw them over, and they must know that by now. Then again, maybe it shouldn’t surprise her that Aramis would prioritise a hot blonde over a murder case.

Aramis persists with the idea. “I’ll give you the keys to my car. I can take a taxi.”

“That won’t help; I can’t drive,” she says, feeling her shoulders stiffen even as she keeps her tone unconcerned.

“What? Why not?” He gives her a confused look.

It’s a reasonable reaction, she supposes. Most people don’t make it to thirty without learning to drive, and she lived in a small town with no public transport for a while, and she was married to Athos who could probably car race professionally if he had his devotion to his duty surgically removed. But the truth is, she’s never liked learning things people think she should already know, too embarrassed by looking incapable and childish to try.

She just… never learnt. She didn’t have the kind of foster parents who wanted to teach kids to drive, she lived in a city until her twenties, Sarazin’s group had getaway drivers and hardly needed her to be one, and when they were married Athos was more than willing to drive her anywhere she wanted to go. Then somehow, she was in her mid-twenties and missing what everyone else seemed to view as a basic life skill. But at least now, she lives in a big city and can afford taxis, and Richelieu never questioned her reliance on them, perhaps assuming she just hated to put in the effort or that her heels were not conducive to pushing pedals.

She adds a note to her mental file on Aramis, though – so he’s from the country too, even if he hides it much better than d’Artagnan, because only country people react with such disbelief to non-drivers. She doubts Porthos would bat an eye at the news she couldn’t drive. 

“I had better things to do,” she says, giving him a smile so fake it may as well be plastic. “Regardless, it means your attempt to delegate your job to me so you can go have a nooner is not going to work. However, I do feel sorry enough about that that I’m not going to make a _single_ one of the amazing variety of ‘pussy cat’ jokes I could be making right now. Isn’t that nice of me?”

“You’re all heart,” he says, shaking his head. “Alright, then. Ana can wait. Into the breach we go.”

Francois is exactly as she remembers him, although on the rare occasions she went to Armand’s house, she always tried to stay at least twenty feet from the creature. As a result, her and the cat’s acquaintance is based on hissing at each other from opposing corners, and that level of familiarity suits both of them. He’s never been quite brave enough to take a swipe at her the way he does most people – maybe it’s her shoes. If she was a creature living at ground height, she wouldn’t want to risk a kick from heels as pointy as hers.

The only person in the world Francois ever liked was Armand – well, and children. He doesn’t attack children. Milady supposes he considers it unsporting or something. Louis told her that his son once even dressed up Francois in his clothing – but of course Louis’s attempt to get a picture of this particular miracle ended up with him with a broken phone and a steadily bleeding wound on his hand, because Francois’s fondness for children doesn’t extend to their parents.

Anyway, the cat’s still a nightmare. He hisses and claws so much even the people at the swanky cat hotel taking care of him aren’t willing to earn their wages by going close. They’ve essentially been dealing with Francois like he’s a lion at the zoo, throwing meat in there at regular intervals and not putting their hands too near. Milady happily lets Aramis take the lead with this particular task. She figures he has the mind of child in some ways, so maybe Francois will take pity on him too.

Or not.

“How’s it going?” she asks brightly from outside the cage.

“Bloody thing’s gotten me five times already and I still can’t force it into the fucking box,” Aramis pants. “Why aren’t you helping again?”

“Have you seen my outfit? Yours has much better protection from the claws.” There’s the sound of another horrific snarl and a matching high-pitched noise of pain from Aramis. “I mean, still not _great_ protection, from the sound of it, but better.”

“Why did you even agree to come if you weren’t going to help?” He abandons the cat for the moment and comes up to the bars to look at her. “Or can I guess?”

“I’d much rather you didn’t,” she says. Francois appears to be planning an elaborate attack on Aramis, she notes, climbing up the other side of the cage, and she decides not to warn him while he’s being so annoying. “As entertaining as your attempts at insight are, I think I’d do better to consult a Magic 8 Ball.”

“Hmm, it is decidedly so,” he quips. “You know, your deal with Treville doesn’t involve this kind of thing, and at any other time, you’d’ve said that the second Athos ordered you to do it. Trying to earn some forgiveness?”

She darts a sharp glance at him, but judging by his carefree expression, he’s probably just talking about her meetings with Rochefort, not the older sins d’Artagnan tried to guilt her with the other day. “I’m not really the ‘forgiveness’ sort.” 

“I’m just saying, maybe you should apologise. That could be what he meant earlier. ‘If you have anything else to tell me’,” he says helpfully.

She almost laughs at that. “It wasn’t. He meant something like if Rochefort contacts me again. You know, relevant things. Athos doesn’t expect me to apologise.” Because he knows that she doesn’t apologise, not genuinely, not anymore.

“But maybe he wants you to.”

“Trust me, I know what he wants _far_ better than you do,” she drawls with a silky smile. “He can’t stay mad forever. I’m sure I can bring him around in time.”

“You know, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but sex doesn’t actually fix everything.” He shakes his head in apparent bewilderment at his own words. “Perhaps you two should try actually talking about your very obvious issues?”

“You should worry more about your own issues,” she advises. He’s wrong. Athos can’t possibly want her to apologise. The last time she tried to apologise to him, he divorced her, amongst other things. And even if he did want that, she’s not going to apologise for doing whatever’s necessary, even if that includes lying to him.

“What, romantically?”

“No. If I were you, I’d start by dealing with the cat that’s about to pounce directly onto -” A loud noise of pain cuts her off and Aramis stumbles panicking and bleeding around the cage, sharp claws lodged deep in the back of his neck, Francois continuing to cling grimly in the belief he’s finally brought down his prey and this is its death struggles. “Oh,” Milady murmurs, already bringing out her phone to record it and marvelling that she didn’t do this sooner. “Never mind.”

X_X_X_X

“My God, Aramis!” Ana’s cornflower blue eyes widen in dismay. “What on earth happened to you?”

“Wild animal,” he says, giving her a rueful grin. “There’s a long story, but I’d need a drink to tell it.”

She hesitates, then opens the closet by the door and pulls out a long blue coat, surprising him. “Not here. Louis is sleeping. I’ll just let the nanny know I’m going out.”

They walk down the street, close enough to touch but not reaching out to each other. He doesn’t wait until they get to whatever bar they’re headed for to tell her the story of the cat – he doesn’t say anything about the case, simply the adventure of getting Francois. Milady’s name makes her purse her lips, but the rest of it amuses her. Then she tells him about little Louis’s disastrous playgroup earlier, an event she’s been organising that suddenly sprouted seven extra vegans last-minute, and an argument between the nanny and her mother-in-law that nearly ended in a punch-up.

“Why are you here, Aramis?” she asks eventually, when they seem to have run out of things to say to each other – or at least, things which don’t matter. They’ve walked past a few bars by this point, all of the variety that serve wine with menu descriptions that eclipse the length of the bottle. She hasn’t suggested they go into any. He hasn’t either. It’s nice just to walk together. There’s no one else around, this time of night – well, a portly gentleman who also seems to be wandering the streets, and a couple of drunk partiers returning home, but no one else.

He shrugs.

“You came to the home I share with Louis,” she says bluntly. “Are you trying to force me to leave him?”

“No,” he says. “No, I’m sorry. I just…” He gives her a rueful grin. “I just got used to seeing you every day.”

She makes an almost soundless ‘oh’.

“I won’t do it again,” he says, contrite.

“Just warn me next time, alright?” she says.

She’s so very pretty, smiling at him like that, but he resists the urge to do more than smile back at her. Then he notices a leaf has blown into her hair. “Hold still,” he says, and she does, and he extracts it – perhaps a bit more slowly than necessary, the two of them inches away from each other, staring into each other’s eyes. “There,” he says eventually, a little hoarsely. “Got it.”

There’s a noise, and Aramis looks up sharply, not sure what it was. But it’s just the plump man from before, who seems to have settled onto a bench, playing games on his phone. Aramis shrugs and returns his attention to Madame de Bourbon.

“I suppose you’d better get home,” he says to her.

“Yes,” she says, suddenly distant again. “I suppose I’d better.”

X_X_X_X

Athos knows he made the right decision telling Milady not to come over tonight. Besides anything else, he could hardly be this drunk if she was here. Of course, the reason he couldn’t be this drunk if she was here is because if she was, he wouldn’t have time to down a bottle and a half of scotch. He’d be too busy dragging her to the bedroom or the counter or the floor or the wall or the shower or… well, anywhere, honestly. His nights lately haven’t involved much sleep, but he hasn’t missed it, certainly not nearly as much as he’d missed her.

What is it about her that makes too much never seem like enough?

Back when he told the others she was his ex-wife, d’Artagnan had been the one to extract the photo from the frame he’d thrown against the wall and smashed. Therefore, logically, d’Artagnan was probably the one to carefully straighten it out and tuck it in a nearby cabinet, a nearby cabinet he opened looking for another bottle of booze and instead found… well, them. Them as they were.

It’s a long time since he’s looked at it and seen anything but a lie. He wonders now if it was easier that way. Because if he looks at that woman in the picture – effervescent, in love with life, bubbling over with joy – and thinks, _that’s what I had_ , and compares it to what he has now, well, that’s so much worse. Not because she’s different (though in some ways, of course, she is) but because he is. The man who fell in love in the space of an hour, laughed easily, and talked openly about his feelings is long gone. She did that.

But then, so did he. Maybe she abused and broke his trust, but his utter disillusionment with life and love and himself? That’s on him, that’s thanks to what he did to her. He’s spent as much time drowning in guilt as in scotch the past five years, and when he doesn’t have anger to cover that up, he feels like he’s going down for the third time.

He stares at the picture, then at the bottle of scotch, then pours himself another glass. If he can’t have his preferred vice here, he may as well fall back on the old one. It’s not nearly as pleasant, of course, but he should get used to filling his evenings this way again, because she’s planning to go to _England_ of all places. Terrible weather, terrible food; why the hell would she want to go there? Some Mr Darcy fantasy? Or is it just the idea of getting as far away from him as possible? Understandable.

When he said they’d always have unfinished business, he meant it. Whatever she said about closure, that doesn’t exist for him. Instead, he dreams of forgiveness, when he dreams at all – him forgiving her, sure, but mostly her forgiving him, a sort of peace from that. That twist in his chest when he thinks of her will never go away, but it would be nice if it stopped feeling like his heart was literally being crushed in her grip. Maybe that would dull guilt and grief and resentment. It wouldn’t get rid of heartbreak, and it certainly wouldn’t dull the clawing, desperate need inside that makes him itch, sweat, pace, lose his mind moment by moment, but it would be something.

He looks at his new phone. It has her number on it – the only one he’d known off by heart to put in the contacts list, which is absurd given he’s only had it for a couple of weeks now and who ever types in phone numbers anyway? He could text her. He wouldn’t need to say much. He probably wouldn’t even need to acknowledge that he asked her not to come over tonight – she might not reference it either. He could just ask her irritably where she is, pretend he never said not to be here. It wouldn’t take her long to get here, and then if he really did want to force an apology out of her, he’s got rope somewhere and a combination trick with ice cubes and candles he remembers she used to find quite persuasive. He could get her to say sorry. Hell, he could get her to say it lots of times. They’d both enjoy it. It would be better than this, this – this empty space where she could be.

Of course, that’s not the kind of apology he wants. And in a way, it’s not the kind of night he wants, either, or at least not immediately. As wildly desperate as he’s always been for her, he’d also quite like an hour, just one hour where they curl up and do nothing at all. They could sit on the couch, her head on his shoulder, pretending to read separate books or watch something mindless on TV, but actually just alternating comfortable silences and small talk. Small talk, about small things. He always used to love hearing every detail of her day. But even as he thinks that, he remembers that he probably never heard every detail of her day, that there was always a filter there, one he couldn’t see. No, it’s good she’s not here. They’ll never be what they used to be, and they were never really what they used to be anyway, and so really, scotch is by far the better option. He’s _glad_ she listened to him when he said not to come over, even if it means they miss one of the few nights they have before she selfishly runs away to England or some random non-extradition country, even if it means he doesn’t get to hold her close and smell her hair or strip her clothes off slowly or wake up beside her –

Someone’s knocking on the door and he’s up and striding across the room before he can even think twice about it, _thank God_ , Jesus Christ, he was going mad, another ten minutes and he would have –

It isn’t her, of course. If he’d paused, he would’ve known that. But despite his reputation for caution and planning, when it comes to her, he’s never thought before he acted. Still, in this case, he should’ve automatically known – he poured out his agony and hurt, and that means he won’t see her for dust. Tomorrow night, sure, and she’ll never mention what he said, but not tonight.

Instead, it’s d’Artagnan, and he looks concerned. Probably not a good sign. “What is it?” Athos asks wearily. “Don’t tell me, the cat managed to knock all of its own teeth out somehow and we’ve got nothing.”

“No, nothing like that,” d’Artagnan says, giving him a half-smile. “I just came to check on you. You seemed upset, earlier.”

“Just frustrated.”

D’Artagnan gives him a look of sympathy. “Athos, you can talk about it, you know. I know it can’t be easy having her around again. And the fact that she was trying to fucking play us again, I mean -”

“Not exactly play us,” Athos says, pouring himself another drink. “She was going to tell us once she had something. She’s not actually working with him.”

Probably. Bloody hell, he doesn’t know any more. She’d seemed to be telling the truth, but it’s well-established she can fool him with ease, and now they’re sleeping together again (however temporarily) it’s probably even easier for her to manipulate him. The fact that sleeping with her is completely unprofessional doesn’t bother him as much as it should, but the fact that it seems to be an even bigger distraction than all the frustrated lust of before is certainly a problem. Who knew that having something could only make you crave it more? Athos pauses as he puts down the now empty glass, already automatically reaching for the bottle again, thoughts and actions running parallel in a truly unnerving way, and recognises that he may, in fact, have truly terrible pattern recognition. So yes, perhaps she’s actually playing them again, who knows. Clearly, he doesn’t.

“Yeah, sure.” D’Artagnan rolls his eyes. “As if she hasn’t lied to us about everything else. I don’t know how you deal with her. And the way she speaks to you sometimes, the things she says -”

“Speaking of which, what did you say to _her_ the other day? She’s been looking like she wants to shove your head in a blender since then,” Athos notes, and d’Artagnan’s face shifts immediately from concern to defensiveness. He’d never gotten a straight answer about that.

“She started it.”

“Excellent. Now this time when you reply, pretend you’re twenty-something, not two,” Athos says dryly.

“She did!” D’Artagnan protests. “She was – provoking me. All I did was respond.” Athos keeps his eyes steady on his protégé, and sips slowly at his drink. After a little while, d’Artagnan sighs. “I – probably shouldn’t have said it. It was a low blow. Sometimes I don’t think things through.” Several ways in which he reminds Athos of himself, though he finds it easier to like his own flaws in other people than himself.

“D’Artagnan. What did you say?”

“I might have – mentioned your brother.” He cringes away slightly.

D’Artagnan probably never even knew he had a brother until they started working with Milady. It’s not like he mentions Thomas often. Still, Athos stiffens slightly. “I see,” is all he says.

“I know I shouldn’t have -”

“Have any results come back on the sketch of the man who killed Sarazin?” Athos interrupts, closing the topic off. He can hear the coolness in his own voice. It’s absurd, but someone else knowing about what happened stings his pride. It’s better than if d’Artagnan knew about him choking her, of course, because he can’t imagine even his friends sticking around if they realised the kind of man he really is, but it still makes him wince. Oh, his pride taking a blow is small compared to the pain of the actual affair breaking his fucking heart and ruining his life and marriage, but it adds insult to injury that it can’t even be a private pain now. Humiliation added on top: how wonderful.

D’Artagnan steps back, clearly surprised and concerned by the subject change. “Nothing.”

“Well, if there’s nothing on the cat yet either, you should go home,” Athos says with finality. “Get some sleep. It’ll probably be a long day tomorrow.”

After d’Artagnan leaves, Athos sits back down with his bottle of scotch and utterly fails to follow his own advice, staying up for hours more. Part of it’s that he’s drinking to block out his guilt at how rude he was to his friend – it’s not the younger man’s fault Athos is a mess – but part of it’s also that he just can’t imagine sleeping. He’s not waiting for her, of course he’s not. Or he shouldn’t be, anyway.

There’s a scratching noise at the door and he sags for a moment, watching the lock slowly creak its way around. She’s picking the lock. He’s almost amused. Much more Milady de Winter’s style than knocking, he supposes, although since she knows he’s mad at her he would have expected slightly more politeness than just breaking in. Maybe she was planning to crawl naked into his bed and soothe his anger by the most direct method she could find – an attractive thought, but also an exasperating one.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he says after a moment, and gets up to let her in.

But again, it’s not her, and this time it’s not one of his friends either. It is still an immediately recognisable face, though. It’s the man who killed Sarazin, and he has a gun, a gun with a silencer.

There’s half a second where Athos wonders why the hell Rochefort would want him dead this badly, then it twigs that he’s the sole witness to what this killer looks like, and that the man’s here to remove said witness. Unfortunately, that realisation does nothing for his reaction time, dulled by exhaustion and alcohol, and does nothing to change the fact that the man has a gun, and he doesn’t.

The man shoots.


	15. A Thief in the Night

Her taxi driver definitely thinks she’s mad, and since it’s three in the morning on a weeknight and she’s been sitting in his cab staring up at an apartment window for some time while he runs the meter, she’s inclined to think he has a point. The light’s on, so Athos is probably still awake. And probably still angry with her. And he’d said not to come over, but Aramis said he actually wants an apology, and she doesn’t _do_ apologies, but right now she’s feeling the urge to. She hadn’t meant to lie to him this time, it had just sort of happened, but that’s no excuse. She can admit to herself that he had a point earlier when he talked about their past together. So she owes him an apology. And that’s a hell of an uncomfortable thing to admit, since God knows he owes her just as many apologies or more and is never likely to pay up except in ambiguous gestures.

The last time she attempted to apologise to Athos did not go well. He was drunk then, and she wonders if he’s drunk again now, and if this will end up with her against a wall with his hands around her throat – but no. He’s changed since then. So has she.

She’s not a person who feels a lot of guilt – it’s not a useful emotion, when it comes to surviving, and she had survival as her sole aim for so long that she’s never really been able to snap out of that viewpoint. That said, she does feel guilty about how she and Athos ended, even if it’s buried in anger more often than not.

At first, there was no anger, because she had no right to anger. She’d done something horrific to him, she’d betrayed him, cheated on him, and his response seemed – well, entirely understandable. She’d been desperate to see him, to explain, to apologise, even though deep down she knew there was no explanation or apology that would ever be good enough. He made it clear he agreed. He didn’t want to talk to her, he didn’t want to see her, he didn’t want anything to do with her ever again, and that all made sense to her, even if it felt like a stab wound anyway. He’d changed the locks, which meant she couldn’t go back home, but that was only right, only fair, since how could she go back home anyway after what had happened? She was still in shock at the time, panicking, unsure what to do. Everything had gone wrong so _quickly_. It seemed like all she could do was give him what he wanted, which was to never see her again.

Except of course, he had seen her again. It had been a bad plan, bad timing, and just plain bad luck, but they’d seen each other. And hadn’t _that_ gone well.

She remembers every word they said, even though she was worn to a thread by that point, exhausted, ill, grieving the life they had, overemotional, destroyed by the destruction of them. He’d been drunk, furious, betrayed, and not exactly thrilled to find her robbing the place. Her stuttered apology didn’t even manage to leave her mouth before the conversation went rapidly downhill. He’d yelled, throwing insults at her, and they’d gotten gradually worse. Some of them were fair, and she probably deserved them, after what she’d done. But some weren’t.

He made it clear he’d spoken to Thomas, and that he believed what Thomas had said even though he apparently couldn’t bring himself to listen to a word out of her mouth, and that he didn’t even want to hear her side. He told her he knew about her staying at Remi’s, but assumed she’d been doing a lot more than just sleeping on the man’s couch while she got better, and drunkenly spelled out what he thought about her as a result in the worst ways he could find. He mentioned gifts he’d gotten for her that she treasured, but acted like they were sordid trades for things they’d done together. He made her feel lower, filthier, cheaper than she’d ever felt with Sarazin. He made her feel dirty, not just for what she’d done with Thomas, but for everything she’d ever done with him, warping her best memories into the nasty, disgusting things he now saw them as. His words were ugly, and they struck close to home, and they were a hundred times worse for being said by the only person in the world she loved, and drunk or not she could see he meant every single thing he said.

And of course her temper snapped in response, even if the snap was half prompted by anger at herself and fear that what he was saying about her had some truth to it. She yelled back, losing it as well, saying sour, horrible things, going with his assumptions about what she’d done with Thomas, with Remi, taunting him with what she was, but also what he was – deliberately hitting his sore spots and weak points, his worst insecurities, using the secrets of his soul he’d told her in confidence when he loved her and she loved him, turning everything he’d always feared about himself and everything he now hated about her into knives to cut back at him with –

And that was it, obviously. For a few minutes after that, she didn’t have the breath to say sorry. In fact, for a few weeks after that, she didn’t have the voice for it either.

Anyway. The point is, apologising isn’t something she does anymore. Especially not to Athos.

“Madame?” the taxi driver says again, and she blinks, jerked out of her reverie. “Did you want to get out here?”

No, not really. She’s aware that this conversation is likely to be extremely unpleasant, and in fact is almost certain to go off the rails. The only question is which specific way it will. She wonders if she even knows how to sound genuine when she says the word ‘sorry’ anymore.

She frowns. The light in the window flickered, she’s sure of it. She’s getting out of the taxi almost before she can think about it, throwing a handful of cash at the driver when he starts to protest, and striding quickly into the apartment complex. She doesn’t know why her heartbeat is suddenly pumping loudly in her ears, why her muscles are tensing like she’s about to be in a fight, why her previous anxiety about apologising to Athos has been replaced by a different kind of fear. So his light flickered, so what? Lights flicker. It hardly matters.

Except that it was a flash of slightly brighter light, not darker, like it would be with a failing light bulb. Momentary, barely noticeable, but something about it made her every instinct light up as well – if she was a cat, her tail would lash, her hackles would rise, and her fur would stand on end. As it is, her eyes widen almost painfully, she strains her ears for the slightest noise, and even as she races up towards his door she takes care to be completely silent. She’s ready to fight or flee, alert to any signs of predators about, waiting for a threat to appear. It’s mad to overreact so completely, to see a light flicker and assume it’s muzzle flash of all things, she knows. When Athos sees her sneaking about the place like she’s in a _Mission: Impossible_ movie, he’s going to laugh his head off – well, alright, maybe not that, but he’ll give her a slightly raised eyebrow of amused exasperation and maybe a low, quick chuckle, and it will be embarrassing.

By the time she reaches his open door – and really, that’s enough of a red flag – any thought of apologies or embarrassing conversations has long since fled. She flattens her back against the nearest wall and peers around, and the breath goes out of her like she’s been punched in the stomach. Athos is on the floor, and he’s bleeding heavily from the chest, and his eyes are closed, and he is impossibly and horrifically still.

_He’s dead._

The thought is not like being struck – in fact, it’s like nothing at all. She feels nothing at all. Not her breath going in and out of her lungs, not her heart beating, not the wall she’s leaning against, not her stomach dropping. She may as well be a corpse too for those few seconds, she feels so completely lifeless. She seems to be deaf and dumb, and apart from the sight of him laying there, she’s blind as well – she can’t focus on anything but that. He’s gone. He’s _gone_.

Then her vision returns again as she blinks, and sound and light flood back – but _wrong_ , somehow, shadowed and off-tone, the world incorrectly put back together in the wake of this. But her vision widening means she registers that she’s not alone here. There’s a man just inside the apartment, gun held in one hand but pointed at the floor. He hasn’t turned to look at her, though she’s making no effort to be silent now, too stunned to even think of it. As she watches, he crouches down beside his victim. He grips Athos’s hair, making no effort to be gentle with his sausage-like fingers, and tips Athos’s head one way and then that, examining his face. Then he gives a soft grunt of satisfaction – _good, he’s the right one_ , she can almost hear him think it – and lets Athos’s head drop back to the floor with a thud.

The next sound startles them both. It’s a sigh.

He’s _not_ dead. He’s alive. Either this man is the worst shot in the world, or Athos has the best luck in the world, or perhaps both. Relief rushes into her, tempered by terror, and by an odd sort of conviction – of _course_ he can’t be dead. That would be ridiculous. She’s not dead. If they ever die, they’ll both die. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

Her automatic response would be to throw herself down next to him and start frantically trying to help, trying to keep him alive, but she manages to check it. If she does that they really will both die. She needs to think of something. As she desperately tries to force her stalled mind into action again, the man checks Athos’s pulse, seeming almost amused by his unexpected persistence. But then he raises the gun again to point at Athos’s head, and there’s no more time for her to think even if she had the space in her mind for anything besides absolute fury and panic.

Later, she will recognise and even admit that it’s completely insane to attack a professional killer who’s probably twice her weight and armed with a gun while she’s got no weapons apart from her fingernails, ferocity, and the element of surprise. The sane thing to do would be to get out of there, call the police and an ambulance, get back-up, get a weapon, make a plan. But she’s incapable of being sane when Athos is seconds away from being shot through the head, so instead she launches herself furiously at the man’s back, wrapping one arm around his neck as tightly as she can and clawing at his face with the other.

In that first mad second she’s not even thinking about incapacitating him or winning, just about distracting him from pulling the trigger. He lets out a loud curse as her fingernails scrape across sensitive skin, but she hasn’t found his eyes, and it’s more an annoyance than anything else. Her other arm he simply yanks away from his thick throat, because he’s solidly built and well-muscled and she’s not exactly a black belt even if she is a pretty good fighter. Everything she knows about this kind of fighting she learnt in street fights and dealing with aggressive clients. The rest of the time, she’s not a brawler, this isn’t her area – she uses precision, carefully aimed attacks, better weapons, surprise, trickery, and forward planning if she expects to be in a physical confrontation. Wrestling is one of her worst skills. Wrestling with a man who looks like bar fights are his hobby…

He throws her off him with a shake and a bruising elbow to her ribs, and then swings to face her, livid red lines across his face from her nails and naked rage in his eyes. She backs away. It’s normally a bad idea to back away from a man with a gun, since there isn’t a single thing here she could use as cover – bullets from that gun would shred through the counter or walls with ease. But he looks like he wants to physically beat her down, and she’s backing to the kitchen because there’s a knife block at the end of the counter. She manages to scramble there and grab one before he’s on her, one hand tightening around her throat more brutally than any of her previous stranglers – after all, most of them weren’t trying to actually kill her, even if they came close. She stabs the knife at that hand, but it’s a kitchen knife, not sharp or long enough to do real damage, and although he makes a noise of pain and lets go of her neck so she can breathe again, it doesn’t seem to have slowed him down at all. Instead, he backhands her in response, a sharp shock of agony that snaps her head to the side, making her vision spin and the muscles in her neck scream and the knife drop from her hand. He still has the gun in his other hand, and he raises it to the side of her head, still-hot barrel burning her temple – still hot because he just used it to shoot Athos in the torso, and the surge of rage that sends through her wipes away any fear. She kicks out, hard, and if her heels aren’t quite the deliberately-sharpened ones she wears when she’s expecting trouble, they’re still sharp enough to make him bend over with a low noise of pain, what with where she manages to hit him.

His grip on the gun has slightly slackened, but not enough, and so she manages to hook her nails under his little finger and pries it back ruthlessly. It breaks with an audible snap and he yells, and even if it’s just a finger, someone holding a broken appendage has a lot of leverage, so she yanks harder at it and his whole hand follows, the gun with it. There’s no chance of her getting it off him, not even now, but she manages to force hand and gun up, and then brings her other hand to squeeze around his, and for a second there’s absolute shock and horror on his face before the trigger goes off and he doesn’t have much of a face anymore. The muzzle flash is nearly blinding at this range and even with the silencer the noise still echoes.

If she was a different kind of person, in different circumstances, this might be the time to throw up, what with the blood and brain matter and the horrifying sight only inches from her panicked eyes. Instead, she shoves at his body hard so the weight of it isn’t pinning her down anymore, and then he’s slumped to the floor, but that’s not as important as the fact that _Athos_ is still slumped to the floor.

She’s flinging herself down by his side before she can really register than she made a decision to, breath coming painfully hard, panic racing through her. Her mouth is dry and she’s shaking, but she can’t afford to have a panic attack right now, so she somehow forces her breathing to slow and her mind to stay on the situation at hand instead of spiralling. She yanks out her phone from her purse, dials emergency, puts it on speaker, but before it’s even connected she’s rolled Athos onto his back and is looking desperately for where the blood’s coming from – yanks his shirt up, finds the wound – blood, there’s blood everywhere, he’s saturated – a gunshot wound to the torso, what the fuck, what the actual _fuck_ – he’s still bleeding. That’s good, isn’t it, that he’s still bleeding? Her sweater’s cashmere or something else ludicrously expensive but that’s not nearly as important as the question of whether it’s a useful fabric for staunching bullet wounds, and she’s barking out the address to the woman on the other end of the phone even as she presses the sweater hard against the wound and feels more wetness spill out of it.

Her mind is completely stuck running in little circles of panic, the panic that didn’t take her over during the fight hitting her now, and the ambulance is on its way, and he hasn’t made a single fucking sound, and she can feel a pulse in his neck and at his wrist but only barely, it’s thready, it’s weak. His breaths are inaudible and she can’t feel them, not even when she lays her head lightly against his chest and waits for the rise and fall, hands still digging into him, still pushing down, trying to stop the bleeding, but there’s already blood on her hands and her face and all over the floor.

“You fucking bastard,” she says to him, and her voice is distorted by tears as much as fury, and she’s wild, and bloodstained, and tearstained, and crazed, and shaking, and half-naked since her top is soaked in his blood, and she probably has brain matter on her as well and it’s disgusting. She looks like the last girl standing at the end of a slasher movie but she swears like a sailor instead. “You fucking bastard, don’t you dare die on me, don’t you dare…” Eventually, her threats die down, and she finds herself repeating again and again the apology she’d meant to give, as though she’s already assuming that whatever happened was her fault, because, of course, it has to be. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Athos, I’m _sorry_ …”

She knows bullet wounds – she’s never experienced one, but that doesn’t mean she’s never been present for a pulled trigger before. So she knows they are, essentially, a lottery, if a terrible one – there’s no such thing as a trivial gunshot wound, despite what media shows. There’s places where you have a better chance of survival, of course, and the chest isn’t one, but people go into shock and die of blood loss from supposedly non-fatal shots all the time, there’s no guarantee. But the opposite is true as well, if much rarer – even people who are shot in the head occasionally survive. Athos is still bleeding, and that means his heart still beats, and that means there’s a _chance_ , surely it does, he _will_ live, he _must_ live, because what would she do without him? 

Later on, she finds herself realising she never hung up the call to emergency, and desperately hoping to fuck that they don’t keep recording if you accidentally stay on the line. Because she’s a fucking mess for the whole time it takes them to get there – she yells at him, rages, sobs, croons, begs, orders, curses, threatens, apologises wretchedly, confesses things she’d never say out loud in any other situation. It’s not a panic attack – she knows panic attacks, and this isn’t what they’re like, not for her. It’s something else. She’s simultaneously wildly furious and semi-hysterical, deep, aching sobs somehow tearing out of her alongside angry expletives, and when the paramedics turn up they look almost more concerned about her than about the men on the floor.

“Just keep holding his hand like that, love,” the paramedic taking care of Athos tells her, attempting to be comforting. 

She nearly snarls at the woman. She’s not an idiot, she knows damn well Athos has no clue she’s holding his hand – hell, if he was awake enough to know, he’d probably be detaching his hand from hers, giving her a faintly annoyed look for it. But she won’t distract the paramedic from her work on Athos with an argument, and it seems like there is a lot of work to do. “What are his chances?” she grinds out despite that, and her throat is so thick with tears she sounds just as raspy as she did when she was garrotted, just as raspy as when she was strangled.

“Good, good,” the paramedic says distractedly, looking at her watch and counting under her breath, and she probably doesn’t mean it but Milady is quite grateful for it anyway. “You did all the right things.”

Shooting a man in the head? Well, probably.

The paramedic eases off the pressure for a moment to get his shirt and her blood-soaked top out of the way and use something much more effective, and Milady feels nausea throb though her at the sight – the wound doesn’t look simple or clean, not like a tiny efficient hole, and she doesn’t know what that means. Did the bullet strike his rib and go off course? Is that what kept him from immediate death? Did it shatter? He’s a mess, a complete mess of blood, and he looks nothing like her Athos at all – he looks like a corpse, he looks like a dead man, and from the expression of concern the paramedic is trying to hide, that description may not be far off the truth.

“We need to talk to you,” a nearby policeman says, because apparently when you call the ambulance for a gunshot wound they dispatch police as well.

“Later,” she growls, still clinging to Athos’s hand like a lifeline.

“No. _Now_.”

X_X_X_X

He wakes up, which is something of a surprise. He’s in pain, which isn’t. He shifts, groaning as the slight movement makes agony radiate through him. His chest is on fire. His limbs are useless, weak. Even breathing seems like a struggle.

“Stay still, you moron,” a familiar voice snaps, and he forces open his eyes to see Milady sitting in a chair across the room, legs crossed and glaring at him. The light stings, but her visible anger is curiously comforting, as familiar as the taste of scotch.

He’s in hospital, that much is immediately obvious, but that does nothing to explain why his ex-wife is liberally splattered in gore, seemingly wearing only an overlarge police windbreaker, and has a uniform cop on either side of her chair. Glancing around the rest of the room, he sees d’Artagnan standing rather closer to his bed, gripping the metal rail on the side, and two other cops by the door.

He’s a bit confused, hazy on exactly what’s happened, which is probably why his first question is, “Am I… being guarded?”

“No,” Milady says with a sigh. She raises her arm and it rattles – she’s handcuffed to the chair. “I am. Though I suppose they’re also guarding you _from_ me, in a manner of speaking.”

He ponders this, and finds it incomprehensible. God, how many painkillers does he have running through him? Everything seems far off and oddly softened – although the pain itself is certainly sharp enough, so perhaps he should be grateful they gave him so much of whatever it is. “…What?”

She shrugs peevishly. “Turns out when you’re a known felon and you shoot a man in the head, the police don’t just take your word for it when you say it’s self defence. They’ve been waiting for your testimony before they decide whether to arrest me or not. That one over there even suggested I shot you as well.” She indicates one of the cops at the door, who studiously does not meet her gaze. “Imbecile.”

“Yes, but you still shouldn’t have kicked him,” d’Artagnan says, rolling his eyes. “That was assault on a police officer. You’re lucky Dujon owes Porthos money, otherwise you’d be being charged for that.”

Athos keeps his gaze focused on Milady, primarily because she’s the only part of the room he seems able to focus on. The rest of it swims a little, colours blurring together, but as always, she stands out, more vibrant than anything else. She looks even more of a mess than she did after the encounter with Sarazin, her hair a wild bird’s nest, face and neck streaked with dried blood, eyes swollen and reddened with dark shadows below them. Judging by her pursed lips, she’s not particularly happy about any of this.

“That’s not why I kicked him,” she says, then sniffs and turns to the one beside her. “Now, since you can see Athos isn’t exactly yelling ‘murderer!’ at me, I think it’s time you took me to clean myself up. You can accompany me to the bathroom, if you must.” The cop almost jumps to attention to unlock the handcuffs, and for a second Athos thinks she’s just going to sweep out of the room without even looking at him again, but instead she hesitates by his bed. She doesn’t say anything, simply leans over and kisses his forehead gently. This close, he can see that tendrils of her hair are literally crusted together with dried blood, and there’s a new swollen bruise on the side of her face, and there’s lines cutting through the flaking brown blood on her cheeks like she’s been crying.

Then she’s gone, leaving him staring after her, as confused as ever.

“How long have I been out?” Athos asks d’Artagnan, memories starting to come back to him. Him opening the door, the man standing there, the silenced pistol…

“About ten hours, all up. Three of them in surgery.”

He should be focused on the attempt on his life, or trying to make sense of her comment about shooting a man in the head, but for some reason his drug-addled mind settles on smaller mysteries. “And no one let her go clean herself up? Really? She looks like a crime scene.”

“She wouldn’t leave the room until you woke up, even for that,” d’Artagnan informs him. For the first time, there’s something like admiration in his face, even if it’s clearly grudging. “When Dujon tried to take her to the station for processing, she made him cry. It was difficult enough to persuade her to allow them to handcuff her across the room from you.”

Porthos enters the room, beaming, quickly followed by Aramis.

“We saw Milady go by and figured you had to be awake,” Aramis says by way of explanation for the sudden influx of his friends. “If she’s finally decided to stop looking like Carrie at the prom.”

“We would’ve been in here too, but it was pretty crowded, and once we heard you’d be fine, we were trying to keep working on the case,” Porthos says, a bit apologetically. “Better wifi in the waiting room, and since there’s no phones allowed here, there wasn’t much we could do if we waited by your bedside, so we took it in shifts.” He gives Athos an odd sort of half-hug, careful not to jolt him at all, but Athos finds that moving his arm to return the embrace still sends a ripple of pain through him.

“The case?” Aramis asks with mock consternation. “That’s why we had our laptops here? Oops. I was doing Buzzfeed quizzes. My bad.” He copies Porthos, giving Athos a hug, and a relieved grin as he does so. “But you’ll be pleased to know, I’m a Gryffindor.”

“Thank you for easing my mind,” Athos says dryly. He thinks he’s speaking comprehensibly, but his mouth feels oddly dry and slack, so he’s not entirely sure. None of them look confused though, so he must be understandable. “Does anyone want to fill me in on what happened? Last I remember, I was about to be shot.”

“Ah. Well, you were shot,” Aramis says helpfully. “Looks like you moved at just the right moment, but it was still not particularly healthy.”

“Gonna have a nice scar,” Porthos adds. “No one’s mistaking _that_ for you getting your appendix removed, that’s for sure. Bullet kinda shattered on impact. A bone got in the way.”

Athos winces at the mental image Porthos’s last statement causes, but manages to push past it. “And yet, I appear to be alive. Did he just give up and go home?”

“Say what you like about Milady, she has excellent timing,” Aramis says cheerfully. “Interrupted him before he finished you off and managed to get the man to shoot himself in the head – well, sort of.”

Porthos half-shuts his eyes, like a man being struck by a great realisation. “I’ve decided I like her,” he says with mock solemnity.

“What, just because she tackled an armed gunman?” d’Artagnan says incredulously.

“Yeah. That.” Porthos nods decisively. “I dunno about you, but me, I’m a simple man, and I like anyone who’ll try’n take on a gun-wielding psycho with their bare hands.”

Athos is struck with a sudden, sharp memory. “It was the man I saw kill Sarazin.”

“We worked that out, actually, not that there was a lot of face left to check against the sketch,” Aramis says, seeming as unbothered by gruesome sights as he ever is. D’Artagnan, on the other hand, looks sickened.

“We’re running fingerprints and blood right now, in fact, but you know how long the lab takes and last I checked Lemay was still busy taking moulds of Francois’s teeth. Seemed to be quite enjoying the novelty.” Porthos shakes his head, mystified by this.

“He’d enjoy it a lot less if Francois wasn’t drugged, let me tell you that,” Aramis says darkly. “I mean, just look at my neck and my arms. Scratch marks everywhere.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Athos says, rolling his eyes even though it makes the room spin again. “Would you like the bed? I can move.” Although actually, he probably can’t.

The room gets even more crowded as Milady and the four cops following her re-enter. She looks considerably less wild, now, all the blood removed from her hair, face, and arms. Her hair’s still damp from washing the blood out, and she’s still seemingly wearing only that windbreaker and high heels, so she’s not quite as impeccable as normal, but the difference is still striking. At least one of the cops guarding her seems unable to keep his eyes from her long bare legs.

“Athos, could you please confirm, officially and for the record, that I didn’t shoot you?” she asks him sharply.

“Nobody’s recording,” Aramis notes, but everyone ignores him.

“Officially and for the record, no, she didn’t shoot me. You can get my statement later.” It’s not like there’s anyone to arrest now, from the sound of it. This investigation has considerably more dead bodies than their typical ones.

His glare works – the other cops leave, although that same man glances longingly back at Milady’s legs once more as he goes.

“I sent a nurse to tell the doctor you’re awake as well. She should be here soon, once she’s finished dealing with some heart attack or whatever.” Milady examines her nails instead of looking at him, seemingly making sure that her hands are perfectly clean of blood now. The amount of concentration she puts into the task is oddly hypnotic, but he can recognise an attempt at avoidance when he sees one. “Athos waking up means I’m no longer under arrest, right?”

“Once they’ve got his statement, yeah,” Porthos says. “They just needed some confirmation, given… everything.”

“All this mistrust,” she murmurs. “So hurtful.”

Athos looks at the others. He can feel his dazedness start to lift, somewhat, but he’s still a little slow and he knows his voice has a bit of a tired slur to it. Also, the pain in his chest seems to be increasing. “Aramis, Porthos, you should go see how Lemay’s doing. The sooner we have something to use against our assassins…”

“On it,” Aramis says, expression sharpening.

“D’Artagnan, if you could speak to the labs. See if you can hurry them along. We need a positive ID.”

D’Artagnan just nods.

“Now, if you please, I’d like a few moments alone with my -” he pauses, stumped. Wife? Friend? Co-worker? Technically, she’s none of them. “With Anne,” he settles on, and she does look up at that, green gaze settling on his face.

The room falls silent after the rest of them have left, the two of them just staring at each other.

He clears his throat. Amazingly, even that sends a jolt of pain through him. “I hear I have you to thank for… well, this.”

Guilt flashes across her expression, before it hardens. “I suppose you do.”

“No, I meant…” he trails off. He tries to sit up, to see her properly, but the movement makes him groan and in half a second she’s there, hands firm but gentle as she pushes him down against the bed again. “Wait, you think this is your fault?”

“It was the man who killed Sarazin,” she points out. “Because you saw him. And I’m the reason Rochefort killed Sarazin.”

“I doubt it.” He attempts a shrug, but that hurts even more. “However insane Rochefort may be, he wouldn’t kill someone just to get your attention. He killed Sarazin because he was worried about what Sarazin would tell us. You were just a fringe benefit.”

“Flatterer,” she quips, though she gives a half-smile as she says it and he can tell he hasn’t convinced her of anything.

He sighs. “Could you just tell me what happened?” He could ask his friends, of course, but what with all the banter and arguing between them it will take twice as long, and none of them were actually there. The odds are they’re exaggerating, anyway. Milady’s not stupid enough to just tackle a man with a gun, especially not a professional killer.

She hesitates, then takes a deep breath and launches into an abbreviated version of events.

It takes less than a minute before he loses it. “You did _what_?!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, was I not following correct procedure?”

“No! You were being borderline suicidal!” He glares at her. “You should have called Porthos, or Aramis – they’re trained, they’re experienced, they would know how to deal with the situation -”

“And they were sleeping on your couch? Because frankly otherwise I’m not sure how they would’ve gotten there in time. Besides, I’m experienced with crazy people with guns too,” she points out. “Or were you not paying attention last week when I got kidnapped by a whole gang of them?” 

“You could have _died_! What were you thinking?”

“That someone had a gun pointed at your head and was ready to fire,” she snaps. “What would you have done if the situation was reversed? Just tiptoed away and called emergency services?”

For Christ’s sake, what the hell is wrong with her? Of course he wouldn’t have, but that’s different, that’s him. He’s – well, he’s a police officer, for one thing. It’s his _job_ to walk into situations like that. He’s sick with fear just at the thought of her being that _stupid_ , and every bit of the fear transforms immediately to absolute fury, because how _dare_ she take that kind of risk. If she’d died trying to save his worthless life –

He’s aware that he probably shouldn’t be yelling at her for saving his life, so he casts around for something he has the right to be angry about, and finds it. “You shouldn’t have even been there.” His voice is cold with fury. “I told you not to come over. For fuck’s sake, don’t you ever listen?”

“It was _your_ idiot friend who said you wanted me to come over and apologise.” She bites the words out and crosses her arms tightly, looking pale and drawn and nearly as angry as him. “But I should’ve realised you don’t want apologies, because you’d rather wallow in guilt and anger forever than ever try and actually _fix_ anything!”

“Oh, _now_ you’ve decided it’s time for apologies?” He doesn’t let the fact that that’s exactly what he wanted dull his anger at all, because he’s still seeing it in his head – her foolishly throwing herself at the man who killed Sarazin, who easily evaded a hospital full of cops, who shot him without blinking. Jesus Christ, it’s a miracle she’s still alive, and if she had died, it would be her own fucking fault for doing something so suicidally reckless. No, it would be his fault, always his fault, but that terrible fear only drives his anger. She could have died. She nearly died.

“I always wanted to apologise. I just knew it didn’t -” Her voice breaks, and she takes a deep breath and turns away, which is when he realises that her eyes are glassy and she’s trying to hold back tears. It’s probably just the result of exhaustion, but the sight disperses most of his rage, his temper subsiding as quickly as it rose, because he can only maintain his anger when hers is there to meet it. Maybe that’s why they both bring insults into so many of their conversations, too unnerved by the emotions beneath the rage to want to deal with them too long.

“Shit,” he says, immediately ashamed of himself. He’s exhausted as well – exhausted, and in pain, and angry at the world – but that’s no excuse. None at all. “Shit, I didn’t mean to -”

“What, yell at me?” She turns back and gives him a careless smile, but he can see the effort it takes her. She’s so tense every tendon in her neck stands out and her voice is tight and slightly too high-pitched. “What a new and terrifying experience that is. I think I’ll survive it, somehow.”

He just looks at her, and says, “Anne,” and there’s as much pleading as apology in his tone.

She looks back, and then she seems to understand exactly what he needs and doesn’t at all deserve, because she bites her lip and walks over to the bed to move into his embrace just as he reaches out painfully to pull her closer. She’s careful in how she leans, making sure none of her weight is on his body, but he can still feel the warmth of her flush against him and he closes his eyes and thinks, _fuck, she really could have died_ , tears springing to his eyes at the thought.

“I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” he admits gruffly. It hurts his arms to move them, and since they’re already wrapped around her, it seems best to leave them there – at least he tells himself that’s why he doesn’t let her go, even when the embrace lingers more than it should. Somehow, a hug is much more intimate than sex between them. “I’m sorry. I keep yelling at you, and it’s not fair, and I know that, and then I do it anyway because I can’t stand... I can’t manage to… you keep walking into these situations, with Sarazin and Rochefort and now this psychopath, and if you got hurt…” his voice trails off again. The drugs are making complete sentences far too difficult. The press of her against him is the only real thing in the world, even if it hurts. He simplifies what he was trying to say, although he knows it’s insufficient, as an apology. “You scared me, that’s all.”

He feels her smile against his neck, and then the shaky huff of her breath. “ _I_ scared _you_?” she says, and there’s the slightest tremor in her voice before she manages to cover it up. “You fucking moron. You nearly bled to death in my arms. Ruining a very expensive and flattering sweater, by the way.”

“God forbid.”

There’s a noise from the doorway as the doctor clears her throat. “Mr de la Fere?”

“Detective, but you can just call me Athos,” Athos says, after Milady has disentangled herself from him, face slightly flushed.

“Well, Athos, you’re extremely lucky that the bullet didn’t go through any major organs. You’ve experienced severe blood loss, so we still need to keep you in overnight, and you’ll need to avoid any strenuous activity for some time, but you should be up and around again in a few days,” the doctor starts, before diving into a series of very specific questions that Athos barely manages to answer but that seem to reassure her. From there it’s a whirl of detailed aftercare instructions and medication and strict rules about when he’s again allowed to sit, stand, walk and run – the last, not for a considerable time.

He tries to concentrate on the information the doctor’s providing, but it’s difficult. That’s mostly because he’s exhausted, he thinks, and perhaps a little because of whatever drugs they’ve put him on. The world seems far away and unnecessary. His chest _hurts_. Listening is difficult. What he really, desperately wants is for Milady to come and lie next to him on this uncomfortable, skinny hospital bed, sharing the flat pillow, and they can just fall back into unconsciousness together for another ten hours or so. Instead, however, she seems to be listening intently to every word, nodding, and occasionally firing off some quick, sharp question.

“Is that alright?” she asks him bluntly after a while. There’s something nervous about how she’s arching her eyebrows in question, a kind of self-consciousness. “If it’s not, maybe one of the others -”

“Is what alright?”

“You’ll need someone to stay with you,” the doctor repeats patiently, “At least for a couple of days. We can get you a wheelchair to help, but your range of motion will be pretty limited, and you’ll only be able to stand or walk for very short periods, so having someone there to help -”

“I offered to do it.” Milady gives a little shrug, but she looks away again. “But God knows I’m hardly the best nurse in the world, and given how often we fight, I mean, I’d understand if you prefer someone else. But you did already suggest I stay at your place, and I’ll fit on the couch better than any of the others. Or we could even share the bed, but obviously only if that’s comfortable for you, and…” she stops rambling and shakes her head, apparently lost for words, cheeks stained pink with frustration and embarrassment, and he realises to his surprise that she actually does want to come stay with him despite all this. “Fuck, I’m bad at this.”

“I… I mean…” he starts, then trails off and clears his throat. He wonders if her reason for wanting to stay with him now is the same as his reason for asking her to in the first place – wanting to have her with him for all the short time remaining, to know that she’s still there, that she’s not gone, that she’s safe, that she’s with him. Feeling it with every breath. After the whole thing with Sarazin, he felt like he needed that – or maybe he just needs that in general. Still, he says, “It’s not _exactly_ what I meant when I said you should stay with me until you left.”

Her lips curve slightly at that, wickedness gleaming in her eyes as she takes his meaning. “Well, I’m sure we can manage. Perhaps not so _athletically_ , but she did say that sexual activity isn’t off-limits provided that -”

He really is out of it if he missed the two of them having a discussion about _that_. “Alright,” he blurts out, just to cut her off before this turns truly mortifying. “Yes. Come and stay with me.”

“Good,” the doctor says, apparently wanting to continue her spiel. “Now let’s talk about the possible side-effects. Obviously, any alcohol is banned while you’re on these meds -”

Athos stares at her wretchedly and then closes his eyes with a long, heartfelt groan that sends a stab of pain through him.

X_X_X_X

“Aramis, it’s sedated.”

“I’ve seen horror movies,” Aramis says with dignity, maintaining his position at the very edge of the lab. “If I go near it, it’ll suddenly jerk up and sink its teeth into my throat.” 

Porthos grins. “I’d like to see that.” He returns his attention to Lemay. “So, you were saying?”

“Francois’s teeth match the partially-healed bite wounds on Francesco’s legs.” Lemay passes them a couple of pieces of paper, and helpfully points towards the conclusion section on the last one. “The level of healing on the bites makes it likely they were gained at around the time of Richelieu’s death, too. We need a few more experts to confirm, but that will just give you more expert witnesses if this goes to trial. However…”

“…cat bites are lousy evidence that a jury will laugh at?” Porthos surmises.

Lemay nods apologetically. “Bite mark evidence for people is dodgy enough, let alone cats. And it won’t be hard for the defence to find expert witnesses of their own to point that out. Even if I can state with ninety-five percent confidence that Francois is the cat that bit them, that’s still a five percent chance it was another cat, and cats aren’t exactly rare. This is more useful as corroborating evidence, not conclusive proof.”

“What if we looked for a fibre? Or some of Francesco’s blood?” Aramis asks.

“We’ve been all over the house with a fine-toothed comb,” Lemay says.

“No, I mean on the cat.” Aramis shrugs when they both look at him. “What? I know you said that it’d be long gone by now, but no one’s bathing this cat without full-body armour, trust me. You should at least check his collar – if it has something caught in it, or got even a little bit of blood smeared there…”

“Francesco was probably wearing pants,” Porthos says. “So the cat would’ve had to bite through them. That’s a lot of up-close struggling. There might be something left on the collar.”

“I’ll have a look,” Lemay says with a nod, although Aramis can see he thinks it’s useless. “Full forensic work-up on the collar and swab checks around Francois’s face, mouth and claws, just in case.”

“Worth a shot,” Aramis says with a sigh. Everything seems like a dead end lately. Despite catching Sarazin and the assassins, it feels like they’re no closer to actually solving this case.

Porthos looks sideways at Aramis as they leave. “There’s another option, y’know.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Rochefort _wants_ us to break the assassins, according to Milady,” Porthos says reasonably. “Since he wants us to find proof that it isn’t him. He has a plan all lined up, and if we don’t get Sofia and Francesco to confess to killing Richelieu, it’s ruined. If she goes to him and says we’re useless, he might find a way to leak some evidence to us, to keep his plan going.”

Aramis raises his eyebrows. “And you want to suggest that to Athos? Right now?”

“Good point.” Porthos sighs. “Maybe we’ll get something through the dead man.”

“The way our month’s going, my friend, I doubt it.”

“I’m actually having a pretty good month.” Porthos catches Aramis’s incredulous expression and shrugs, a little defensively. “Hey, I met a girl. After this is all over, I’m taking a few weeks off and we’re going on holiday together.”

“You met a girl,” Aramis echoes. “Is she married to someone who can afford to have you killed? In the middle of an ugly divorce? Involved with another man in any way, shape or form? One of your co-workers? Filled with hatred for you due to unspoken past sins? Trying to manipulate you for her own dark reasons?”

“Nah. None of that. Just a nice, beautiful woman who wants us to go to Italy together and thinks I’m fit.”

Aramis shakes his head in bewilderment. “Where do you find women like that?”

“Everywhere. Better question is, why are none of you guys ever _attracted_ to women like that? And the answer is, you just don’t have my healthy attitude towards relationships.” Porthos shrugs, looking just as bewildered by this, but with no real criticism in his words. “You all like messed up, complicated shit.”

Aramis thinks about all his, d’Artagnan’s, and Athos’s romantic entanglements. “You may be right.” Although given everything with Flea, he’s not sure Porthos is _quite_ as averse to complexity as he claims.

“Always am.” Porthos tilts his head slightly to the side, thinking. “Hey, speaking of terrible romantic ideas, remember Sofia and Francesco’s lawyer, Madame Pinault? Seemed to quite like you last time we dealt with her. Anyway, if we try and talk to them, she’ll show up right away. Think you could flirt well enough to keep her distracted while I use the cat bites to try and break them?”

“Yes.” Aramis brightens at the idea. “Yes, I do. Actually, we should get d’Artagnan in as well. Prisoner’s dilemma the pair of them – you with Francesco, him with Sofia. After all, only one of them has cat bites.”

“I like it when we have a plan.”

“Even a bad one?”

“ _Especially_ then.”

X_X_X_X

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Ana says, as Constance grabs a tin of biscuits and plunks them on the cracked little table.

“Shop bought, I’m afraid,” she says, just as apologetically. She looks around the kitchen like she wants to apologise for it too, and Ana wishes she could explain how unnecessary that is. The place Constance shares with d’Artagnan is small and a bit shabby, but the light from the windows makes everything glow, there’s evidence of a happy, busy life everywhere you look, and Ana thinks it’s a thousand times nicer than her and Louis’s huge, lavish, interior-decorated-to-the-point-of-no-return apartment. 

“They’re delicious.” Ana wonders if they’re both overcompensating somehow. The truth is, she’s not very good at having friends. Most of them have turned out to be trying to use her in some way. Only two months ago Rochefort had to take her aside and warn her that the woman she’d started going to the gym with was in debt and working her way up to asking for a loan from her ‘new friend’. Three months before that, he tipped her off to the fact that the couple she and Louis had invited to dinner twice were looking for investors in their new business. When you’re as rich, powerful and connected as they are, nothing’s real, and while she’s grateful to Rochefort for keeping her from being a gullible idiot in her desperation for friendship, sometimes she wishes he’d just let her live with her illusions and pretend people like her instead of what they can get from her.

But Constance is… real, somehow. Something about her face, the stubborn set to it, the honesty of her smile, makes Ana think here is someone who would never treat anyone badly if she could help it.

Ana realises she’s crumbling the biscuit in her hands instead of eating it, and puts it down, flushing slightly. “Will d’Artagnan be back soon?”

“Not for hours yet, I expect. I headed home once we found out Athos would be fine – figured he didn’t need a whole crowd at his bedside while he’s out of it, and I can always head round to his place tomorrow to check on him – but d’Artagnan never can do anything by halves.” The affection in her voice is clear.

They’ve had coffee four times since the other week, and despite their lives having no surface similarities at all, it feels like they have a lot in common. Slightly distant parents, hordes of siblings, getting married young, struggling to be taken seriously, valuing their independence…

Of course, it’s one similarity in particular she’s here to talk about today.

“You fell in love with d’Artagnan when you were married to someone else.” It comes out blunt, too blunt, despite the quiet way she says it.

Constance stiffens, then very deliberately relaxes. “Yes, I did. Right mess I made of it, too. When something’s over…” She shrugs, but her eyes are knowing as she throws a glance at Ana. “It wasn’t all my fault, though. D’Artagnan went too far trying to get me to leave my husband – emotional blackmail, insults, sleeping with other women, lashing out in all kinds of ways. He should’ve known trying to force me wasn’t the way.”

“Aramis hasn’t. Tried to force me to leave, that is. He asks why I stay, but he doesn’t…”

“He’s a good man. Needs the occasional smack upside the head, but otherwise good.”

Ana laughs. “Yes. I know.”

“He deserves to be happy. So do you.” Constance shrugs. “You should still take as long as you need figuring it out, though. Rushing’s a good way to wreck things. Just… be honest, all right?”

“And if I asked you something, you’d be honest as well?”

“Always,” Constance says, and it sounds like a promise.

“Adele.” That’s all Ana says. She knows Adele – has known her for a long time, in fact, as Armand’s much-younger girlfriend. But it wasn’t a close acquaintance. Until the other day when Rochefort took her aside to speak to her again, the way he always does, she had no idea Adele was also the girlfriend Aramis had broken up with when he met her. “Did he love her?”

Constance hesitates. “Um…”

“You said you’d be honest.”

“I know. I just don’t know the answer.” Constance pauses, searching for the right words. “Porthos or Athos would know better, to tell the truth. Aramis certainly _thought_ he loved her, but from what they’ve said in passing it might’ve just been his knight-in-shining-armour thing.”

“Knight in shining armour?”

“You know. Aramis has a lot of old-school chivalry, which is funny from such a…” It’s pretty obvious she’s about to say something like ‘manwhore’, but she swallows the word at the last second. “He likes rescuing women. When our area has a scared, sobbing girl on our hands no one’s better at comforting them.”

“I see.”

Something about Ana’s face must give her emotions away, because Constance reaches out and takes her hand unexpectedly. “You’re not Adele,” she says.

“I know that.”

“No, I mean – Adele liked being taken care of. Expensive gifts from Richelieu, grand gestures of affection from Aramis, all that sort of thing. If Aramis likes pretending to be Superman, she liked pretending to be Lois Lane. But that’s not you, you’re not like that, you’re tough. I could see that right off.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” Ana admits.

“Be sure. You are.”


	16. Friends Like These

Athos feels terrible. Every movement sends agony slicing through him, even with the painkillers. He’s clammy and sweaty at the same time, the pain is making him nauseous and unable to sleep, the drugs are making him dizzy, confused and stupid, and even small activities like sitting up feel impossibly difficult and draining. The combination of it all leaves him weak, exhausted, _pathetic_. He’s willing to bet he looks terrible, too. So why does she keep looking at him like he’s the most amazing thing she’s ever seen? 

“Stay still,” Anne orders sharply for the fifth time as he tries to raise his arms to help, and this time, he obeys, wincing. She’s unwinding the bandage, but as gentle and careful as her hands are, every little tug makes his wound ache. It almost feels hot, burning, and not in a pleasant way. A part of him is glad that the layers are being removed, even temporarily, but the air also makes him flinch.

“There,” she says a lot more softly, bandage removed. He glances down and winces at the mess of stitches. Anne reaches for the cloth and looks up into his eyes, trying to gauge his pain levels as she touches the wet cloth tentatively to an area still nowhere near to the centre, daubing away the sweat and dried blood and grime. Every touch hurts, especially as she moves closer to the stitches, sending new flares of pain through him, but the coolness and cleanness is pleasant at the same time, making for an odd combination of pleasure and pain.

Her closeness adds to the pleasure, though.

He leans in, despite the tearing agony it sends through his torso, to press his lips to hers, making her start in surprise. It’s not passionate, just sweet, but nevertheless, after a moment she pulls away and rolls her eyes at him. “Don’t start things you can’t finish, darling.”

It’s a flippant, sarcastic _darling_ , but he can’t help smiling crookedly at it anyway. “I bet I could finish it.” Just probably not without ending up back in hospital. Still, it might be worth it.

The truth is, he’s so exhausted and aching that he’s not sure he could manage wild passion. He just wants her pressed against him. Even if it hurts. After all, when doesn’t he hurt?

“Maybe you should obey your nurse’s orders.”

“Maybe you should give better orders.”

“Now why would I do that? I’m enjoying all the delayed gratification,” she says mischievously, moving the cloth lower teasingly. Lower than the bandages went. So low that it’s nearly dipping beneath the waistband of the sweatpants he’s wearing. “Reminds me of our early days of dating.”

“What delayed gratification?” He points out, leaning into her slightly again. She lets her forehead rest on his shoulder lightly and continues dragging the cloth around in little, careful circles. “Back then we ended up in bed together after knowing each other – what, six hours? And one hour into the actual date. We didn’t even make it to the entrees.”

She arches an eyebrow at him, finally pulling the cloth away. His chest is clean. Of course, that just makes the stitches and bruising stand out much more visibly. There’s a little bit of fresh blood seeping out, too, and he can see her bite her lip as she surveys it. “Yes, believe it or not, I do remember _that_. That’s not normal?”

He looks at her and realises it seems to be a genuine question, which sends a surge of hurt and jealousy through him. In his wearied and drugged state, emotions closer to the surface, it’s harder to keep the sting of it out of his expression. Of _course_ what he thought was a once-in-a-lifetime connection, love at first sight, wild passion that swept them both away, is just how she does first dates. “…No? Why on earth would you think it is?”

“It’s not like I do a lot of dating.” When he shoots her an incredulous look, she shrugs, a little defensively, and turns to start fiddling with the package of clean bandages. “You were my first experience of… you know, being a girlfriend. Apart from being someone else’s girlfriend experience, and that’s not quite the same. Actually, you’re my last experience as well, unless you count Louis, and that’s _certainly_ not the same.”

That strikes him as somewhat sad, but he’s definitely not going to say that. He does try to make sure none of his automatic disgust and discomfort shows on his face – when he reacts like that to mentions of her previous career, he feels like he’s proving her right, that he would have dealt just as poorly as she thinks if she’d told him about her past when they first met. That she _is_ right is beside the point. The least he can do is hide it, instead of hurting her feelings again.

He’s not sure what motivates his next question, but it bursts out of him anyway: “Why did you say yes? When I asked you out?”

“For mysterious and sinister reasons of my own,” she says dryly, gaze trained on his chest, eyebrows furrowed in concern. “You’re still bleeding a little. Do you think we should call the doctor?”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” he says impatiently. “She said a little blood was normal. Really. Why did you say yes?”

“It was eons ago, Athos, what does it matter?” When he fixes her with a look, though, she sighs and corrects herself. “I _liked_ you, you idiot. It wasn’t that complicated.” 

“You liked me,” he says, a little sceptically. His memory of their first meeting is crystal clear – him walking into his brother’s office to literally crash into her, scattering files everywhere and sending her painfully to the ground, his mouth going dry and palms sweaty when he saw her perfect, scowling face, and then nervously blurting a sarcastic joke that couldn’t possibly have been more ill-timed. While he helped her pick up the files and apologised eventually, it hadn’t exactly been a wonderful first impression, and he’d been privately amazed she’d said yes when he asked her out halfway through trying to sort files. Although even without the first impression, he would have been amazed – not just because she was stunning, but because it had only taken a very short conversation to realise she was also clever, dry, feisty, and funny as hell. He’d gotten a crush on her in moments, been crazy about her in minutes, and fallen madly in love with her within hours.

She shrugs, starting to carefully place the new bandages. They feel better against his skin, some of the itchiness and discomfort gone, but he still feels weak, his wound and head both overheated. “You talked to me and looked at me like I was a person,” she says eventually.

“That seems like easy criteria to meet.” He winces as she presses a bandage into place and her gaze darts up to him in concern.

“Apparently not.” She sighs again, looking at him, and this time gives him more. “You didn’t assume I was easy or stupid, you were kind, you made me laugh, and you treated me like royalty. And it didn’t hurt that you were hot – when you were passing me that first file and your fingers brushed mine, I felt a _zzzap_ , you know? That never happened to me before.” She smiles, a little wryly, settling the final bandage gently into place. “Is this question just so I’ll stroke your ego, Athos?”

“No. I just wondered…” He shrugs and then groans, hand going to his side, as the movement hurts.

She steps even closer immediately, smile vanishing, staring at the bandages she just put on in real worry. “Is it too tight? Do I need to redo them?”

“No,” he manages to say. It was his own stupid fault for shrugging carelessly. He can feel tears spring to his eyes, body responding to the rip of pain down his side, but blinks them back.

“Ice pack? I can get an ice pack. They said -”

“It’s fine, Anne. I’m fine.” When she’s playing nurse, she reminds him more of the Anne of six years ago – although even then her nurturing side had always been fairly well-hidden, seen by no one but himself. Still, some pain is fairly inevitable with a gunshot wound, no matter what you do with it. After a minute he’s able to continue. “You were out of my league, that’s all. I just wondered what made you -”

“No one but you thought that, Athos,” she almost snaps, smile disappearing in a blink, stepping back. It almost feels like the pain intensifies as she does – he thinks (pathetically) that the comfort of having her nearby has been better then the painkillers, so far. Although in some ways, just as dizzying and confusing. He knows he couldn’t have slept at all last night if he hadn’t managed to persuade her to share the bed with him. For some reason, just knowing that she’s within arm’s length helps, as if some part of him thinks she’ll be off doing something suicidal if he can’t reach out and touch her at every moment.

“Of course they -”

“In fact, everyone thought the opposite. They just didn’t say it in front of you because you got furious at anyone who made even the slightest disparaging comment about me. And there were more than a few comments when you weren’t there, trust me.”

“What?” He blinks at her, pain forgotten for the moment in surprise. He’s too exhausted for a conversation that seems to be getting this complicated, he thinks, too exhausted to deal with her at her most astringent, but this conversation has started and it seems like there’s no way out but through. It is, after all, his fault for beginning it. “Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says sarcastically. “Pinon’s golden boy and unofficial mayor decided to marry the broke, cheap townie secretary who dressed like a… _well_. I owned six outfits when I met you, Athos, all of them were much more suited to my previous job, and I couldn’t afford to buy any more. My social skills were non-existent outside of a few specialised situations. I had no education, no family, and no real career. You were refined, eloquent, well-off and successful, and I was trash, and they all knew it, even if you didn’t.”

He stares at her. He never for a single moment saw it that way, saw _her_ that way. It’s shocking to think she did. “Did _you_ think I was out of your league?” The question sounds absurd even as he says it.

“Sometimes,” she says simply, but he can see from her eyes that saying it is a strain. “But not always for the same reasons they did. You were… I don’t know, good. A good person.” She shrugs and half-turns away.

“No, I wasn’t,” he says, a little too harshly. “I was the farthest thing possible from a good person.” The memory of that night hangs between them. It feels like the agony in his chest doubles, and it’s not the gunshot wound, it’s the knowledge of what he did.

She sighs, looking back at him. “Athos, was what you did to me that night the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

“Yes. Of course.”

She reaches out and moves a sweat-soaked strand of hair out of his face. “And you’ve never done anything like it before or since?”

“Of _course_ not. Unless you count the other week, with -”

“No, I’m not counting rough sex or yelling at me,” she says, rolling her eyes. “So that was you on the worst day of your life, at your lowest moment, the most terrible sin you’ve ever committed. Yes, it was inexcusable, and it defines you, but thirty-plus years of doing your best to help people defines you just as much. Whereas me? There’s a hundred candidates for the worst thing I’ve ever done, and that’s not an anomaly, that’s a personality. You’ve no idea of some of things I did when I was Sarazin’s girl, or Richelieu’s assistant, or even when I was just on my own.”

“To survive.”

“That’s what I like to think.” She gives him a crooked smile that’s somehow unbearably sad. “Doesn’t mean it’s always true. You’re not the only one who’s done bad things, Athos. I have to believe that the past isn’t a life sentence, that I can be more someday, be someone new.”

He opens his mouth, not sure what he’s going to say ( _don’t change too much, please, I couldn’t stand it if you did_ ), but sure he should say something, when her phone alarm goes off. Saved by the bell, he supposes.

“Medication time,” she says quietly, picking up his glass of water and going to get him more. She’s being oddly quiet right now, oddly contemplative. So is he. Maybe it’s the awareness of how close they both came to dying. Maybe it’s the awareness of how close they are to something else.

He still hasn’t figured out what to say when she gets back, so he takes his pills like a good patient. Even swallowing the fucking water to wash them down hurts. He really is pathetic, he thinks, tiredness and pain and confusion making him gloomy.

Her phone goes off again and he quirks an eyebrow at her in question, since clearly it’s not another load of medication.

“Porthos says they broke the assassins,” Milady says, staring down at her phone. “My God, maybe your friends aren’t totally useless.”

“Thanks for the amazement.” Athos rolls his eyes at her. He wishes he could get up, go help, join in the investigation properly, not sit here lying around uselessly, with his ex-wife making sure he takes his medication and bringing him water as if he’s completely fucking helpless. Because he is completely fucking helpless. But he’s officially banned from standing at all until the day after tomorrow, and they’d all agreed (well, everyone but him) that he shouldn’t push his luck and head down there in a wheelchair. And the truth is, he doesn’t think he could get up without her help.

“You should thank me for not including you in that.” She touches a hand to her throat, and somehow the gesture is both thoughtful and troubled. “Porthos thinks I should come in later.”

“Why would he… oh.” Athos understands, even through his slightly drugged-up haze. “He wants you to convince Rochefort you’re still working with him. Changing the account numbers once you get them.”

“Yes.”

That wouldn’t normally be Porthos’s call to make, not unless he cleared it with Treville, but Athos is technically on medical leave for the next few days so Porthos may be acting lead on this investigation now. And besides, it’s not like Athos gave any orders about it, too distracted by his own fury to think about broader implications. In his earlier ranting, he certainly didn’t give her any indication he wanted her to keep seeing Rochefort, but he didn’t outright ban it either. If she’s telling the truth, it will give them information they can’t get otherwise, and maybe give them an angle to use later.

It’s valuable. He doesn’t like it at all.

“You’d better get going, then.” He knows the words come out cold, knows he should stop himself. “I’m sure you can manage to be convincing.”

She looks like she wants to say _the hell with you_ for a moment, eyes lighting up with anger at his tone, but then she seems to wrestle herself back to calmness, sucking in a deep breath. Still, her voice is a little rough when she replies, “He says they won’t need me for a few hours. If you’d like me not to be here, though, I can fill the time until then with a movie or shopping or something.”

He sighs, anger subsiding at the poorly-hidden hurt on her face. “I didn’t mean…”

“Yes, you did,” she says simply, and her lips quirk into a slightly bitter smile. “But under the circumstances, it’s understandable. I am… trying. I really am.”

“So am I,” Athos says. “I swear. I just…” 

She shrugs. “I know that after everything, me lying is kind of a sore spot. Aramis told me he thought all you wanted was for me to say sorry. Is that true? Is apologising something we do now?”

The question shocks him, and he has no idea what to reply. He never said sorry to her for choking her half to death, he realises, or at least not out loud – the closest he’s come to an apology was him risking his job not arresting her after discovering she was playing them at Rochefort’s house, giving her time to run, letting her go, and his quiet conviction that he’ll do the same thing as many times as he has to if it comes to that. Does that mean her apology could be risking her life to save his?

But some part of him wants to hear the words, whether it’s for not telling him about meeting with Rochefort, or for all the other lies she’s told him, or for the infidelity that smashed their marriage to pieces. Five years ago he wouldn’t let her say it to him either time she tried, because if she said it, she might turn into a person again in his eyes, and he needed her not to be. He needed her to be something he could hate, needed her to be cruel, malicious, scheming, materialistic, selfish, anything but a real woman, one who made mistakes. And then after what he did, he needed that even more, because if she wasn’t a monster, then he was one.

And then he saw her in that room at Rochefort’s house, voice raw and eyes burning with fury and pain as she spoke of what he’d done, and realised how wrong he was. Yes, he wants an apology, but he doesn’t deserve one, and there’s no apology he can give her that will be anything besides stupid, empty words, no apology that won’t come out sounding like justifications, excuses or blame.

She reaches out and strokes her thumb lightly across his cheek, as he stares at her, stunned, and then stands up and walks to another room, leaving him lying there, unable to follow.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he just doesn’t reply at all. Instead, he chooses to close his eyes, feigning sleep and thinking about nothing at all. After a while, the latest load of painkillers kicks in, and then the sleep becomes half-real, dreams and reality mingling as he idly watches her move quietly around the place through half-closed eyes, watches her put on a load of his washing, clear the draining rack, and do a variety of other small chores that definitely aren’t any part of why he originally asked her to come stay with him.

X_X_X_X

“Detective Aramis.”

Aramis nearly inhales his coffee in shock. It takes a moment before he turns around and shoots the other man a roguish grin, spreading his hand to gesture towards the pretty, sharp-faced woman he’s been skilfully charming for the past hour. “Monsieur Rochefort! Have you met Madame Pinault, one of the finest lawyers in -”

It takes all his self-control not to react as the other man slams him hard against the wall. He could easily evade, slide to the side and then grab him and place pressure on the small of his back so that Rochefort has his face pressed to the wall and his arm twisted up painfully behind him. He’s done it a thousand times – well, a hundred at least. But the last thing they need is for him to do it to the man they’re currently investigating, especially in front of Madame Pinault ( _call me Suze_ ). He’s not going to give anyone a chance to claim police brutality if they ever manage to nail the bastard to the wall.

“Stay away from her,” Rochefort snarls.

“I… was not aware you and Madame Pinault were so close,” Aramis says, honestly bewildered. A glance at the lawyer shows her looking just as surprised as he is.

“Not her. Ana de Bourbon.” Rochefort shoves his face far too close. “Stick with Adele Besset, stick with this lawyer, stick with sluts in bars. I don’t care. But if I hear you’ve bothered her again…”

“There’s nothing going on between me and Ana de Bourbon!”

“I know that. I know everything that goes on in Ana’s life.” This close, the mad gleam in his eyes is all too obvious. “But I also know you’d like there to be. Ana is leagues above you, perfect and beautiful and pure, and she’s not interested, do you understand? Don’t you _ever_ touch her again.”

Rochefort lets him go and takes a few steps back, still glaring. Aramis stares at him, still more surprised than anything else. 

“How’s it any of your business?” Aramis asks, letting an edge of mockery come to his voice, purely to see what happens.

“You’ll never understand the bond between Ana and I,” Rochefort snaps. There’s absolute certainty in his voice, but more than that, there’s a kind of almost-religious fervour to his tone like he’s delivering a sermon. “Everything in her life is my business. And if you bother her again, I will make that my business as well, do you understand?” 

Aramis wonders why the hell Ana told this psychopath about him. He knew the two of them were friends, and found that mystifying enough, but he didn’t realise they were so close that Ana would tell him about an extramarital affair, or that it would offend the other man so much. But Rochefort’s tone of absolute conviction is surprisingly persuasive. The words _she’s mine_ were almost audible at the end of the speech, and he wonders what the _fuck_ happened between Ana and Rochefort, and why she’s never mentioned it.

They stare at each other in silence, and then Rochefort appears to regain some sanity, still breathing heavily. “She’s married,” he says unconvincingly, clearing his throat. “I simply feel you should remember that.”

“I will if you will,” Aramis quips.

Rochefort is gone before he’s finished the sentence.

X_X_X_X

It might be hours later when her voice pulls him back to consciousness, he can’t tell, but he feels strangely warm and content despite the throbbing pain in his side, and unfortunately it might be purely because she’s here. He lets his eyes open slowly, feeling a smile spread across his face at the familiar sound of her singing under her breath – for some reason, she always sings while she cleans. She never even seems to realise she’s doing it. For just a moment, the past and present blur hazily together, his beautiful wife in one of her flowing dresses dancing about the house as she tidies things up, flowers in her hair and happiness in her eyes.

“You really don’t have to clean,” he says after a few moments.

“Fuck,” she says guiltily, when she sees he’s awake, nearly dropping the dirty plates she was carrying away from the coffee table next to the couch he’s currently stationed on (staying in bed made him feel like even more of an invalid, so he’d refused). “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You could make it up to me,” he suggests lazily, because he has very strong painkillers running through his system and he hasn’t tried to move in however many hours he’s been asleep, so he’s feeling pretty good right now.

“Mmm, could I?” To his surprise, she puts the plates down and cups his face, leaning over him to press a slow, lingering kiss to his mouth.

He tugs at her arm – it sends a spike of pain through him which he ignores – and after a moment’s hesitation she gives in, settling herself onto the couch and nestling against him carefully. He shifts to give her more space, which hurts like _fuck_ , but is absolutely worth it when she links her fingers behind his neck and kisses him again.

It’s very teenage, how long they just sit on the couch and kiss, mouths pressing and angling against each other’s. Yes, teenage, that’s the word for it – the teenage experience she never had, he thinks with a pang of sudden sadness. At the age when she was supposed to be having awkward make-outs with sweaty, nervous teenage boys, she was on the streets, or she was living with a crime boss. He wishes fiercely that he could have met her then, that they could have been teenagers wound around each other, no history to worry about, only a present to enjoy, only a future to make. 

Thoughtfulness can’t hold up long against lust, though, and it’s not long before tentative exploration gives way to passion, tongues tangling together, mouths travelling, his teeth on the lines of her neck, her hands moving to tangle roughly in his hair. After a while he tries to reach out, to tug open the bow of one dress strap and undo it, but she captures her hands with his and holds him in place with careful firmness, then leans forward and bites his lower lip in admonishment. He’s not allowed to move, and she makes that clear even as she makes it nearly impossible _not_ to move, because God, he really wants to slide his hands up her legs, wants to shift her fully into his lap instead of snuggled into his side the way she is. Even though it would aggravate his wound again.

He deeply enjoys her slow, tentative exploration of his body, even if she keeps stopping to double- and triple-check that she’s not hurting him in any way. He’s still on some fairly heavy painkillers, so the world seems a little unreal, but that does nothing to dull the feel of her cool, languid touches, or the electricity they leave in their wake. If he’s required to spend the next couple of days either in bed or on the couch (not to mention completely sober) this is an eminently enjoyable way to fill the time, her head leaning lightly against his shoulder, her mouth and hands lazily playing with him, her warm curves pressed against his side.

“How are you feeling?” It must be the fiftieth time she’s asked.

Athos groans, trying not to yank his hands out of her grip, not to bury his fingers in her hair. “Frustrated.”

She hesitates, then says into his shoulder, voice slightly muffled. “I could… I mean, it’s not actually _banned_ …” She lets one hand rest suggestively on his thigh. “As long as you don’t move.”

“I can live with that,” he says hoarsely, every nerve ending coming suddenly alive. His heartbeat quickens, each thud sending a little spark of pain through his chest, but compared to the slow burn of lust it’s much less noticeable.

She studies him for a moment, making sure, and then her hand moves away from his thigh, and he sees stars. “And now. How are you feeling now?” It would be a caring question, if not for the wickedness to her grin, and the movement of her fingers against him.

He fights not to jerk up against her as she circles her thumb across the tip of his cock. The cool, slow slide of her fingers against him is irresistible, but he knows damn well if he moves at all then not only will it cause a stab of pain to his wound, but she’ll stop entirely to make sure he hasn’t reopened anything or done any damage. He struggles to try and think of something to say that isn’t _don’t stop, please don’t stop_.

“Like you got all your ideas about what nurses do from porn, to be honest.” He manages to put a twist of wry humour into it despite his severe distraction, because he doesn’t want her to think he doesn’t appreciate everything she’s been doing, and he feels her smile against his skin.

“That’s hurtful. I’ve also watched a few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy.” She sinks her teeth lightly into his neck, making him gasp, then licks it to soothe any pain, and her hand slowly traces and teases its way back to the base of his cock, to squeeze it a little more firmly this time. His eyes slide closed in pleasure.

He tries a few times to persuade her that he can be useful, but every time he moves, she stops moving, as merciless as ever. She won’t let him pull her into his lap to thrust up against her, or roll them over so he can thrust hard inside her, or even push his fingers into her, no matter how worked up this is making her – and it is making her worked up, that’s obvious. Her eyes are half-pupil right now, glittering with voracious need, and he can feel the tremble of her body against his. She’s right when she points out all of those things will hurt him – even the feel of her hands, as careful and slow as she’s being, hurts a little right now – but dammit, he wants to feel her body against his.

The trouble is he’s spent five years not touching her, and he’d forgotten the glory of brushing his lips against her neck to taste her sweat, licking a line along her collarbone, rubbing his beard against her inner thigh, pressing his nose into her hair and inhaling the scent of her. He’d forgotten how it felt to dig his fingers into her hips, her waist, her arms, her legs, all that pale skin, so soft and silky and perfect that every touch is addictive, forgotten the way she trembles and twitches against his hands. And the dirtier, raunchier things he’s missed – how it felt to steady her as she rode him gasping and still slam up to quicken the pace, how it felt to flip her face-down and grind against her ass, how it felt to circle his fingers around her clit over and over again as she writhed mindlessly, how it felt to snap his hips against her quick and dirty and feel her clench about him. Back when they spent half their time curled around each other, it wasn’t quite so difficult for him to lie still and let her use her clever tongue to investigate every seam and hollow and surface of his body, on the rare occasions she made it clear she wanted him not to move. Now, it feels impossible not to reach out, to touch and taste and _take_ , to pull and push and make her moan against him. He knows what it’s like to be deprived of her, now, five years’ worth of deprivation, and so his lust has a desperate, greedy edge to it. It only makes it worse to know that having her now is temporary.

It would be accurate to say he’s been touch-starved since they ended, but that’s not the whole story. He tried touching Ninon, after all. He kissed her. Her lips felt strangely fleshy and wrong against his own, not quite real, and her mouth tasted just slightly and unidentifiably odd, like milk on the first day it’s going off. Gravity didn’t inexorably pull him to lean forward and deepen the kiss until he was drowning in it. Her thick straight hair didn’t curl around his fingers the way it should’ve, but instead slipped straight through without catching. Ninon was _wrong_ , because she wasn’t for him, because she wasn’t Anne. While he’s been starved of touch, the problem was that he was starved of _her_ , and that was worse. He wonders if it’s possible to find someone whose body fits yours so perfectly that there is no replacement. He wonders if he could push her roughly down amongst the cushions on the couch and lick his way up under her dress before she could stop him.

She must feel the way he’s twitching with the urge to do so, because she breathes into his ear, “I said no. I’m not going to let you aggravate your wound just to bring me off.”

“If I lay on my back, maybe you could just -”

“Nothing that puts weight on you. Maybe in a few days.”

“I could use my mouth on you and stay perfectly still,” he says, knowing that he’s absolutely lying and that it would absolutely be worth it anyway. “You’re just enjoying torturing me.”

She pouts. “This is torture?” She twists her wrist and sticks her tongue in his ear at the same moment, and the sound he makes is definitely a tortured one. He tries to thrust against her hand and then groans in more pain than pleasure as a tearing, burning agony shoots across his torso. She gentles her touch again, tutting. “Uh uh. No. What did I say about moving?”

He nearly says he hates her, jokingly of course, but stops himself just in time. It’s too close to the truth sometimes to be said as a joke. “Not to?”

“So you _can_ be taught. Tell you what, be a good boy…” Her tongue traces the shell of his ear again. “And maybe I’ll put a show on for you after. If you’re so worried about me getting off as well, I’m sure I can reassure you on that point.” She nestles in against him, lightens her touch cruelly and very, very gently scrapes her nails up his length, and whispers hotly into his ear exactly what he’s not allowed to do to her, and exactly what she’s going to do to herself for his entertainment, and what it’s going to feel like when she does…

X_X_X_X

Athos groans, far too grateful for the pillows he’s propped against, head swimming as she helps him redress – it could be nurse-like, except for the way her hands linger. However much he’s resenting this forced inactivity, there’s something to be said for getting a sponge bath after sex, specifically the way it turns one round inevitably into two or more. At this rate, he might need the bed rest even if it wasn’t for the GSW. “You’re going to actually kill me, you know that?”

“Oh, please. We’ve been much closer to going out with a bang before. Remember that time on our honeymoon? We could definitely have drowned.” 

“No, I’ve forgotten. We’ll have to do a replay.” He risks the pain to catch the skirt of her dress between two fingers and give a meaningful tug, persuading her to come closer so he can give her another thorough kiss.

She draws back with slight regret. “Maybe when you’re better,” she says, trying to get her breath back after the kiss, face flushed again from just those few moments. He barely resists the urge to ask her for an encore of her earlier performance. 

She starts straightening her dress, finding shoes, a purse, and it occurs to him that it’s definitely been a lot more than the ‘few hours’ she mentioned before. Still, now that the assassins have confessed, they can set the pace. Waiting too long would be suspicious, but he’s sure it will be fine. And he’s tired enough now that he thinks he’ll probably nap again until she gets back, so really, it’s wins all round.

He’s still watching her with slightly-hazy, sleepy appreciation when a knock comes from the door, and with a reluctant sigh she goes to open it, although she checks through the peephole, just in case it’s another mad gunman.

“Oh.” Her voice goes flat. “It’s Catherine. A frequent visitor, I suppose?”

“I haven’t seen her in five years,” Athos admits, startled into wakefulness, and she gives him a confused look.

“You said you talk to Thomas all the time.”

Actually, he said regularly, which was factually accurate if not honest. “I call him once a year. At Christmas.”

After one more incredulous look at him, Milady opens the door and steps to the side, letting their unexpected guest in. “Hello, Catherine. It’s been too long. For all of us, apparently.”

Catherine looks frozen on the edge of saying something nasty, lip curled back from her teeth, an expression of utter hatred on her face. She looks Milady up and down, and if anything her disgust intensifies – Milady is wearing what she no doubt thinks of as lounging-around-the-house clothes, which is to say, she’s dressed in a white dress with swirling skirts that makes her look young, light, and breathtakingly pretty. To Catherine, it must be like looking at the past, but more than that, she probably considers it inappropriate – all long bare slender arms and legs, warm lush curves straining against cotton, curling dark hair with a blue flower, the ties at her shoulders looking like one good tug would undo each bow and bring the whole thing to the ground (and as she proved to him earlier, that appearance isn’t misleading). It’s gorgeous, but when it comes to Milady, Catherine hates gorgeous. It suddenly occurs to him that a significant number of the ‘comments’ Milady mentioned probably came from her, long before she had reason for them.

“Anne,” Catherine says eventually, very coldly. “Of _course_ you’d be here, taking advantage of Athos’s injury to try and worm your way back into his life. As if he doesn’t know that you -”

“And I think _that’s_ my cue to leave you two to talk on your own.” She grabs her purse to leave without giving him a kiss goodbye, even though he’s sure she’d enjoy rubbing that in Catherine’s face that she can do that. He’s not sure what he thinks about how easy it is to fall back into couple’s habits with her, even though what they’re doing should be nothing like that. Although he’s damned if he knows what they _are_ doing right now.

“Anne…” he starts, equally unsure what he’s going to say to her.

“Your meds are on the table. If I’m not back by six make sure you take them, or there _will_ be consequences.” With a whirl of skirts and the light scent of jasmine, she’s gone. He can’t tell if this is her taking the high road, or if she’s just avoiding dealing with Catherine. Honestly, a part of him thinks that leaving an injured man with Catherine is the definition of hitting them while they’re down, even if the divorce technically freed her from ever having to speak to Catherine again.

“What is _she_ doing here, Athos?”

Athos rubs his forehead and sighs, trying to stem his rising headache, then winces as moving his arm wrenches agonisingly at the still-healing wound, a line of fire opening up. “It’s a long story. What are _you_ doing here?”

“We’re family, Athos.” Catherine aims for warmth, but ends up just at annoyed self-righteousness. “When I heard you were injured…”

He’s about to ask how she heard he was injured, but considering how gossip spreads through the force and through Pinon, the only surprising thing is that she didn’t show up at the actual hospital. He’s not thrilled to see Catherine again, but she is his sister-in-law, and she was his friend for a long time (even if it was more due to proximity than anything else), and she came all the way to the city to check on him, so he tries to look grateful for that. He casts around for some pleasant topic and comes up with one, nodding towards her stomach, “So how’s everything going?”

“What everything?”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Thomas said the two of you were having a baby.”

Her lip curls. “He meant we were _trying_ to have a baby. I’m sure he would have clarified if you’d stop hanging up on him in the middle of his sentences. I don’t know where you get off treating him like some kind of criminal while you have that slut prancing around your apartment making herself at home.” 

“My relationship with Anne is none of your concern.” It was a poor word choice, he realises a moment later.

Catherine looks at him like he’s insane. “Relationship? You can’t seriously be thinking of taking her back. Not after what she did.”

“You _married_ Thomas, and it’s not like he was any more innocent there than Anne,” Athos says, even though he should just tell her that despite their softer moments together, he has no intention of trying to revive the past fully. Anne doesn’t want him back, and nor should she. Catherine’s right, too – after what she did, after what he did, the trust is gone. He feels a stab of pain, and tries to tell himself it’s the bullet hole in him.

“She was throwing herself at him, Athos!” Catherine looks at him like he’s an idiot, lips pursed in revulsion. “Cavorting around the office in those tiny skirts and high heels, flashing her tits, shaking her ass, doing whatever it took to get him. She offered him an easy fuck and in a moment of weakness, he gave in. It was entirely her fault, the slut, and Thomas just didn’t know any better. Now he does.”

Athos takes deep breaths that ache, though he’s seeing red just at her words. “So Thomas is a victim in your eyes. I see.”

“He’s a man, Athos. You of all people should understand that women like _her_ know how to lead men around by the -” She’s almost spitting out the words, face flushed with fury. 

“He’s your partner and my brother, and he owed us both better than that,” Athos cuts her off sharply. “Yes, so did Anne, but I’m not going to only blame her.” Unlike with Anne, Athos has never done anything to Thomas so terrible that he feels the guilt of it thrumming through him every day, so there’s no remorse to dull his rage. And what he feels for Anne is ten, twenty, a hundred times as strong as whatever confused fondness he has for his brother, too, which makes it both better and worse at once – he’s angrier at her, but also has more reason to look past that anger.

“Well, I am! She’s the one who went after my husband – well, my fiancé, at the time. So much for the sisterhood.”

If he weren’t so angry – with Catherine, with Thomas, with Anne, and with himself – Athos might be amused by that comment. He’s in no position to lecture a woman on feminism, but he’s pretty sure no part of the ideology espouses placing all the blame for sexual activity on women.

“So why don’t you tell me this ‘long story’ that explains why she’s here? Not to mention what she did to earn your forgiveness,” Catherine says spitefully. “Or can I guess?”

Catherine was never good enough to match verbal swords with his wife, but she’s known him since he was a child, and she’s always been good at accurately identifying his motives and weak spots. _So I suppose you’re going to marry her,_ she’d said, the first time they went on a double-date, a week into him falling in love with Anne, when Anne was briefly away from the table. He was very obvious about his belief that Anne was his soul-mate, even just a week in. _You’ll regret it, you know._ He’d told her to mind her own business, told her he knew what he was doing, and he was wrong. But so was she, because even now, he can’t bring himself to regret his marriage, not the way he knows he should. Of course, Anne probably has a different take on it.

“We’re working together on a case,” he replies shortly. “A man was murdered recently, and he was the best fixer in the country, so there’s a lot of motives to go around. She worked for him, and she’s our best source of information about him. That’s all there is to it.”

“Oh, of _course_ it is, Athos. You’re so transparent.” She rolls her eyes, but then seems to process the rest of what he said, expression sharpening. “Wait. A fixer who died recently. You mean Richelieu? Armand Richelieu?”

“You’ve heard of him?” He’s not sure why he’s surprised, the man was very well known after all, and yet he is. 

“My father used to hire him on occasion for background checks.” Catherine looks like she’s working herself up into a rage again, cheeks staining red once more. The violent colour clashes with her hair. “Which is why I recommended him to Thomas – my God, years and years ago. Did that little bitch get her job through Thomas? Did he give her a fucking referral? I can’t believe this.”

Thomas is probably sleeping on the couch for the foreseeable future, judging by Catherine’s expression, but Athos is too caught up in this new revelation to care. “Probably a coincidence,” he offers, though he doesn’t believe it for a second. Is this what she was going to tell him the other day? Was it thanks to Thomas that Richelieu hired her? He hates the idea of Anne and Thomas even still speaking, let alone being that involved in each other’s lives – but she worked for Richelieu for a long time, so it must have been a long time ago, if Thomas did recommend her. Maybe it was just a kind of last favour from his brother after everything blew up. He tries to believe that. 

“I’m sure. It’s _just_ a coincidence, and she’s _just_ here to give you information – my God, you’re pathetic, Athos. Pathetic, and blind, and still willing to roll over like a puppy at the slightest sign she wants you to,” Catherine snarls. “She got her claws into you six years ago, and now she’s trying to do it again.”

“I assure you, she’s not. And if she was, she wouldn’t succeed.”

“Assure yourself of that, if you like, but don’t bother trying to convince me of it.” Catherine looks like she’d like to spit at him. “Clearly she’s got you just as stupid as back then. Don’t tell me, she got down on her knees and sobbed out how _sorry_ she was for blowing your brother. And then stayed down th-”

“I think it’s time you left.” Athos hardly recognises his own voice, it’s so icy. Below that, he feels a churning, awful sickness, a red-and-black tangle of nausea and pain, because her words bring back images and they’re images he really doesn’t want.

“I think it’s time that you listened to me! I can’t believe you can even bring yourself to touch her.” She’s almost tearful now as she rants, but it’s from raw fury and exasperation, nothing softer. “Are you seriously telling me you can shove your tongue down her throat and not wonder if you can taste my husband’s -”

“ _Enough_.” If she doesn’t shut up, he’s going to vomit, Athos thinks distantly: throw up everything he’s eaten in the past year, and then go straight for the scotch, just like it’s that day five years ago all over again. The Catherine of back then wasn’t this vulgar – she’d planned to be the ideal politician’s wife, he remembers that much about her, it was her only ambition in life, to be the woman wearing pearls and waving and standing behind her man, and politician’s wives were never less than proper. He can only imagine five years of fruitlessly waiting for Thomas to return to that path have made her sharper, more spiteful, vicious; but he doesn’t care about her reasons, he cares about the result, and the result is the sickening, blinding pain her words are inflicting.

“Oh, did I hit a nerve?”

Of course she fucking did, he’s nothing but nerves when it comes to Anne, nothing but raw nerves exposed to the world. About everything else, he can be dry, indifferent, insouciant, but his past with Anne is far more of an open wound than the bullet hole he’s currently bearing. Hell, it’s not just open, it’s enflamed, bloody, infected, _unbearable_.

“If you don’t get out,” he says quietly, seeming almost calm, every word enunciated clearly. “Then I’ll have to get up and throw you out, and then you’ll have to explain to everyone why I’ve split my stitches and bled out. So I suggest you leave, Catherine, and don’t come back. I’ve had about all I can take when it comes to the comfort of _family_.”

She goes, but her ugly words linger in the air, revolting and unforgettable. No, he never thinks like that when he’s touching Anne, because he never thinks at all when he’s touching Anne, unless you count thoughts like _yes_ and _please, more_ and _Thank God_. He doesn’t think of her on her knees for Thomas, just as she apparently doesn’t think of his fingers wrapping around her throat, and what the fuck is wrong with them, really, that they don’t? It should be all they can see, but it’s not.

Well. He’s seeing it now.

X_X_X_X

Porthos is having a celebratory coffee when Milady de Winter stalks in, looking like nothing so much as an offended cat. Something’s got her in a tantrum, that’s for sure, and he wonders uneasily if she and Athos have started tearing each other to shreds again. Still, even that thought can’t dim his good mood.

“You got them to talk?” she spits the words at him, sounding strangely outraged by this.

Porthos sips his coffee slowly, just to be smug. “Yeah. What, you thought we couldn’t do anything without you?” He studies her, but despite her visible annoyance, he can’t read her eyes. “Or hoped that, maybe.”

Some people in the world think their worth is made up of the measure of what they can do, think they’ll only be kept around if they’re providing tangible benefits for other people. Porthos knows this, because for a long time, that was him too, and it’s a struggle every day not to be that person again. The worse kind of foster parents have an ugly habit of warning the kids they get that they’ll be passed on the moment the house isn’t spotless, the second they haven’t got dinner done in time, the instant they show signs of being kids instead of unpaid servants. The most unforgivable sign, of course, being emotion, or ‘damage’ as they called it.

That’s the _worse_ kind, of course. Not the _worst_ , who do other things entirely.

Porthos has been damaged since he was five, and that means he’s learnt to let the wounds heal, to not keep cutting them open or hiding them away. D’Artagnan thinks he can make his injuries heal by beating the perpetrator into the ground, Aramis looks to the future with so much determination that he never realises the past is a freight train approaching behind him until it hits, and Athos guards his wounds and his past with equal ferocity and marinates both in scotch, but that’s not how Porthos works. He thinks the bravest thing someone like him can be is open, honest, caring and trusting, after everything that he’s done, after everything that’s been done to him. Laughing, hugging, crying, offering a hand to people who need it – all good things. Not weak. Brave.

He wishes he had the right words to explain that to Milady de Winter, whose open wounds are only visible if you see her eyes when she stares at her ex-husband.

“I _hoped_ you’d get enough to put Rochefort away,” she deflects coolly. “I take it that didn’t happen?”

“Nah, it’s like he said, the numbers don’t lead to him.” That thought sours his drink a little, and his mood too. “But we’re getting as much as possible. He’s telling us everything.”

He waits, and after a minute of silence, she cracks. “Fine, tell me. How’d you do it?”

“Took them to separate rooms. Told ‘em we’d proved Francesco was there by the bite injuries.” Porthos smiles, savouring the next bit. “And that we had enough on the other cases to prove they worked together. Said to Francesco, well, we can charge you, ‘course we can, and we’ll win – the only question is if you want to make it difficult for us. Because if you do -”

“We’ll go after Sofia as well.” Milady raises an eyebrow. “Interesting. Do you actually have any proof on the other cases?”

“Next to nothing, but enough to bluff it. Started with ones years back. Said we had a person seeing them together on the street, a flight attendant on the plane, even said we had Sarazin’s testimony. Said you were a CI – they’d heard of you,” he adds by way of explanation. “So that shook them a bit. And then Francesco decided to confess. A heroic sacrifice for his one true love. Brought a tear to my eye.”

“Whereas Sofia stonewalled and survived unscathed. I told you she was the smarter one.”

“So it’s bright to not care too much about the people you’re with?” Porthos doesn’t wait for her to nod or say something sharp, but continues, “Where does that leave you?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t quite catch your meaning.”

“You’re not sorry, and you do.” He waits until she meets his eyes, and registers the embarrassment and defensiveness hidden in her cold gaze. You wouldn’t think someone would be so mortified by saving a life, but apparently, she is, because in this case ‘saving a life’ means ‘loving Athos’. Nothing worse than being ‘damaged’, after all, and letting that damage show.

“Is there a point to this? Don’t you need to get back to threatening to beat people up and pretending ‘streetwise’ is the same thing as ‘useful’?”

He ignores the insult, which is slightly too shrill to seem anything but panicked. “Yeah. The point is I’m thanking you.”

“I see. Don’t.”

He shrugs. “Alright. Doesn’t matter if I say it out loud or not. You saved my mate’s life, and I owe you one. Know you don’t need one or want a friend, but that doesn’t matter, because even if you don’t I’m your friend now too. Understand?”

“You know next to nothing about who I really am. What kind of friendship is that?”

“I know some,” Porthos says, voice low. “If I look at you and think we’re not so different, that our pasts are pretty close, then you must’ve looked at me on day one and thought the same, because you’re quicker’n me.”

“You’ve just said one very clever thing and one very stupid one,” she says, with the edge of a smile. “I am quicker than you. That’s why I looked at you on day two, and realised every similarity is surface. You could never be anything like me.”

Porthos shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. Couldn’t be Athos, either, and damn sure I don’t want to, any more than I want to be Aramis or d’Artagnan or even Treville. But they’re still my friends. Even if I don’t know everything. Even if sometimes their choices are shit. All right? Just adding you to the list.”

“You’re a strange man, Detective du Vallon.”

“Only well-adjusted person in this fucking place, actually.”


	17. Opening Old Wounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays! Have this super-cheerful chapter.

Athos is standing, and it is ridiculously difficult and quite painful. But he’s not going to stay seated when his Captain turns up. Treville already had to be forcibly stopped from flying back from an important conference after he heard one of his officers had been badly wounded, so Athos doesn’t want to give the impression it was that close, even if it was.

“Stubborn as ever,” Milady notes.

She’s already offered to help three times, with increasing amounts of sarcasm, but Athos is clear on what he wants – to be better already, or at least able to pretend he is. If that involves some lying to everyone else and himself, then that’s the price he’ll pay. He’s not using a fucking wheelchair, especially since he’s not even allowed to operate the wheels himself. Crutches are useless, since it isn’t his leg that’s hurt but his upper body. He’ll tough it out. He can do it.

“Detective.” Treville gives him a sharp nod, but relief is plain all over his face as he looks Athos up and down.

“Captain,” Athos replies.

“Well, this is all very stoic,” Milady says dryly. “Do you want me to leave the room so you can hug without feeling less manly?”

“So I hear you’ve been in communication with our suspect,” Treville says to her sharply, ignoring her sarcasm.

“Rochefort’s been meeting with me, yes. I’m not sure I’d say communication has been achieved, though.” Her lip curls. “He likes the sound of his own voice far too much for that.”

“And there’s nothing yet on the shooter who attacked you both?”

Athos shrugs as well now, although it’s incredibly painful and he can see his ex-wife eye him in concern. “No hits on the sketch or the fingerprints in the system, and no DNA matches from other crime scenes. Thanks to running it past Porthos’s CIs we have got a name, though – LaBarge. Rumoured to be from Gascony, but we haven’t found any proof of that.”

“I can’t believe Rochefort tried to have one of my officers killed.” Treville looks furious.

“To be fair, I suspect LaBarge was acting on his own, trying to take me out because I could ID him. I have no proof of it, but it’s what I think.”

“Whether or not Rochefort gave that specific order, it’s certainly his fault, anyway. I want to throw the book at him. But from the sound of it, we’ve hit a brick wall again?”

“Yes. Hard. The assassins can’t even testify against him, they were hired anonymously, and none of the information Francesco gave us leads back to him.” Athos scowls. Breathing is already starting to feel like he’s pulling in fire instead of air, each breath too much effort, but he’s too stubborn to sit. “We’ve got _nothing_. He still thinks Milady is working with him, but that’s about our only advantage.”

“All right.” Treville leans forward, face intent, already pulling out a little notebook and a pen. “I have some ideas.”

They get through the entire notebook, as it happens, and Milady brings them another one with a muttered comment that sounds a lot like _Luddites_ , which is unusually pleasant in terms of her insults. Athos isn’t entirely sure it hasn’t just been a waste of paper, though, since it feels like all they’ve done is rehashed everything.

“We need an in,” Athos says finally, after they’ve been over potential plans a hundred times. “He doesn’t trust Anne – at least not enough. We need him to say something incriminating out loud, somewhere it can be recorded, without killing everything in the vicinity. That’s the only way we’re getting anything. He covered the rest of his tracks too well.”

“We need to find a weak spot,” Treville agrees. “Hit something that makes him so scared or angry he forgets to be cautious.”

“If he covered the rest of his tracks so well,” Milady points out tartly, “Then he wouldn’t be so damn nervous about what you might find out. There’s no reason to stake out Sestini like a goat for you unless there’s a way to take him out.”

“Perhaps,” Treville says thoughtfully. “Or perhaps we’re missing something. Nevertheless, keep me posted. And you -” He turns weary grey eyes on Milady, who raises her eyebrows and waits expectantly. Instead of giving a lecture, though, Treville just says, “You try and remember what he says to you the next time you meet, and write it down. Word for word, you understand?”

“Aye aye, captain,” she says.

Athos manages to lower himself back down into the chair after seeing Treville out, although he can feel sweat beading his forehead at the effort. Staying upright and shuffling to the door and back was actually easier then trying to transition between sitting and standing. He hates this, this feeling of helplessness, this uselessness.

He hates whatever’s happening with him and his ex-wife as well. After Catherine’s visit, he’d politely told her that night he was too tired to do anything, what with his injury and all, and they’d slept at opposite edges of the bed. She’d even offered to take the couch again. Maybe he should have taken her up on it, because despite the pain of shifting, in the morning he found he’d moved in his sleep until he felt the warmth of her all down the side of his body, her face tucked neatly into the curve of his neck. And then all her warm, fragrant skin was within touching distance, and she was only just awake and too sleepy and forgetful to remember her absolute ban on him doing anything strenuous, and really, he’s not strong enough to resist any of that, even if he’s fairly sure that’s the reason he ached too much to move for the whole morning. It was worth it. He didn’t think of Thomas once, but now he’s fully awake, and his chest aches badly, and he does.

He just… doesn’t know what to do. He can’t fix something that happened five years ago, can’t stop it, can’t wipe it away. Both of their actions are in the past, they’re done. Similarly, whatever he does now won’t change the fact that she’s leaving, and that he definitely can’t ask her to stay. So part of him says to enjoy the present, since it’s the only time he’ll get, seeing as their past is a nightmare and their future’s non-existent. But another part screams at him that he needs to do _something_ , that he can’t take any more years like the last five, that mindlessly falling into bed isn’t fixing anything. Of course, resisting falling mindlessly into bed doesn’t appear to help either. It seems to be a no-win situation.

“Any thoughts on dinner?” Milady calls from the kitchen. “How do you feel about a stir fry?” There’s something so impossibly _domestic_ about this, and he understands again the troubled expression on her face as she ate the breakfast he made that morning less than a week ago, as she watched him wash up pans and plates, as she listened to him ask her to stay with him until she left. When they act like this, they feel _married_ again, and that feeling is addictive and awful at the same time.

It’s like something squeezing his heart just a little too tightly, a little too cruelly. They’re not married anymore. He’s not her husband anymore. He can’t let her back in his life, not really, no matter how simultaneously terrible and wonderful it’s been to have her near again for these past few weeks. He can never trust her that way again. Catherine’s right about that much, at least. Their divorce destroyed him so utterly that he crawled into a bottle for five years. Even in the unlikely event she was willing to give it another shot, he’s not sure he could risk it, not sure he’s willing to put his heart on the line like that again. He can’t let himself fall back in love with her (can’t let himself admit that maybe he never fell out of love to begin with). It would kill him. What they were – it’s done. It’s over. It can’t be revived, can’t be fixed, not after what she’s done and what he’s done. He knows that. And he’s still so _angry_ with her when he thinks about what happened – not as angry as he was even a week ago, but still angry.

But looking at her now as she pokes her head out of the kitchen to look at him questioningly, the warmth in her eyes, he wonders if maybe he could at least forgive her. It can’t be forgotten, can’t be moved past, but could it be forgiven? When they let each other go this time and finally move on, could it be without hatred and rage, without the weight of both betrayal and guilt still dragging him down? Him forgiving her, her forgiving him – is that possible? Is it possible for his anger to ever fade entirely? Could he just let it go? When he thinks about her with his brother, it seems impossible.

His mind goes to Catherine’s sharp words about who he owes forgiveness to, her apparent conviction that he should never forgive his ex-wife but, hypocritically, that he shouldn’t have been angry with his brother to begin with. If he forgives Anne – not that he’s sure he really can, but if he does – does that mean he has to forgive Thomas as well? Let Thomas back into his life? For some reason, he can’t imagine that. He hasn’t really missed his brother’s presence in his life at all, not the way he’d missed hers (not that anything can really compare to the way he missed her). He’d loved his brother, but it had been an effort to love him, and he’d made the effort mostly out of duty.

They’d never had anything in common, really, despite growing up together and both living in the same town. Thomas had a type of ambition Athos couldn’t understand, and he often made very cold, calculating choices about how to achieve those ambitions, including his relationship with Catherine. Athos had no ambition except to have a job that made him feel like he helped people, and made his choices based on his moral code and the people he loved. Thomas had been their parents’ favourite, and he’d grown up privileged and a little spoilt, while Athos had been the eldest, brought up to believe he had responsibilities and duties he owed to other people, one of which was looking after Thomas. They hadn’t been close. It was nothing like what he has with Porthos, Aramis and d’Artagnan, who feel more like his brothers than Thomas ever did.

“Athos?” Milady’s standing in front of him again, irritation on her face. “Stir fry? Yes, no, maybe?”

It’s so... reminiscent. Five years ago, she would’ve asked that, and he would’ve said, _I think you’ll be too busy to cook, let’s order take-out_ and then pulled her, laughing, down to straddle him. She would have made some joking, token protest, _we can’t have take-out every night, persuade me it’s worth it_ , and he would have trapped her hands above her head in one hand while the other one slowly travelled up under her dress, heating her blood until she ground against him in little, needy rocking movements. He would have kept his gaze roaming all over her so that he could see every single spasm of pleasure cross her face, watch the way her breasts bounced and jiggled as she moved, admire the play of muscle under smooth, creamy skin, while his hands just kept teasing and playing inside and out of her, drawing lines of heat and wetness across her.

The pull of the memory is so strong that he reaches out for the hem of her dress and tugs her closer to him, although he knows she won’t straddle him while he’s injured, and she closes her eyes and opens her mouth at the first touch of his, a little noise of contentment caught in her throat. He holds her face in his hands and kisses her like it’s five years ago, when he could press his mouth and fingers against her cheeks and neck and hair and know every bit of her was his, when he was owned by her in the same way. And then another memory hits –

_Are you seriously telling me you can shove your tongue down her throat and not wonder if you can taste my husband’s –_

He pushes her away without any warning, almost panicked, and he doesn’t know whether the push is gentle because of his self-control or because of his injury. She blinks at him from a few inches away, confused, lips swollen and eyes dilated. For a second, he thinks about explaining, about blurting out what’s bothering him, but he’s not quite brave enough. Instead, he makes a pained noise and clutches his hand to his chest like his wound is paining him. And it is, a little, but he’d barely noticed, because the storm in his head is much worse.

She’s instantly concerned, questioning exactly where the pain is, what type it is, checking him for bleeding, wondering if she should call emergency, and he feels like an asshole.

X_X_X_X

He’s with Ana, again, and he knows he shouldn’t be but simultaneously he knows he shouldn’t be anywhere else. All he wishes is that Louis could be here too – little Louis, that is. Older Louis he wishes would just – well, not die, he’s rather nice and very friendly, despite his many flaws, such as infidelity. Move to Siberia, perhaps. He wonders if he could sell Louis on Siberia as a lovely place to live.

Then the conversation hits a lull, and he gets stupid.

“Why…” Aramis trails off, looks away.

“Why do I stay with him?” Ana says, guessing his train of thought, probably because he’s asked her the exact same question half a dozen times.

“Yes,” he admits. “Why _do_ you stay with him? We’ve spent more time together, lately, so your old excuse is rubbish. You know how I feel about you.”

“I do, yes. Is it similar to how you felt about Adele Besset?” Her voice is soft and sweet, but the words are ruthless anyway, and Aramis nearly leans back from the force of them.

“How did you…?”

“A friend told me the story. It doesn’t portray you in the best light, Aramis.”

“I did love Adele.” He clears his throat, which is suddenly scratchy. “But when I met you and fell out of love with her, I told her right away, and I did everything I could to make sure she was okay. It wasn’t pleasant, but I never lied to her.”

“But you still fell out of love with her,” Ana says softly.

“You want me to promise I’ll never fall out of love with you?” He’s willing to. He’s never felt about anyone the way he feels about Ana. He’s never met someone so capable of sweetness and strength at the same time. She leaves him breathless with her beauty. She’s like no one he’s ever loved before – there might be some surface resemblances to his past girlfriends, but that’s not what he sees when he looks at her. That’s not what he loves about her.

“No.” She sighs. “I don’t think anyone can promise that. I just want you to see this from my point of view. You saw a woman in a bad relationship she couldn’t get out of, and you fell hard, and then once she managed to leave her boyfriend, you lost interest. And fell for me. A suspicious woman could see that as a pattern.”

“If you leave Louis -”

“If and when I leave my husband, it’ll be for me, not for you.” She sips her drink, then places it back on the table with a decisive clink. “I mean, I hope we can go out for dinner afterwards, but that’s a separate thing.” 

“I love you.”

“I know.” She sighs again, looking down at the table. “Aramis, people – they have a tendency to look at me, and fall for an idea of me instead of who I actually am. And you’re someone with a history of falling for ideas instead of people. If I end my marriage, completely upset my son’s life, enter a protracted custody battle, and probably lose my main source of income, I need to be sure that I’m doing it for the right reasons, and not just because I’m pinning my hopes on a happy ever after with you.” 

“Do you love me?” he asks gently, persistently.

“Well, of course,” she says, and now she does look at him, smiling in spite of her troubled mood. “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. Which is why I want to make sure I never look at you and see you as the person who ruined my life. I don’t think I _could_ see you that way, but people do, sometimes, don’t they? Please let me figure this out myself.”

“And how does Rochefort fit into that?” he asks carefully. It’s stupid to be jealous. If Ana and Rochefort had something, it was probably years ago. But she said herself she’s been with Louis since she was quite young, so the fact she’s never mentioned Rochefort in a romantic sense seems significant.

She gives him a confused glance. “Why would Rochefort have anything to do with it?”

“He said that… well, he implied…” He clears his throat. “He indicated that the two of you were… close.”

“He was probably just looking out for me,” she says dismissively. “He worries about people taking advantage of me, using me for my money or connections. He can be a little over the top sometimes, though, a little overprotective – he used to warn me about Marguerite, can you believe it, and lately he’s even been worrying about the time I spend with Constance. It’s excessive, but harmless. He’s always been like my older brother.”

“It wasn’t that kind of closeness he was talking about, trust me,” Aramis says. And he’d sounded so _convinced_. “He definitely meant the naked kind.”

She stares at him, drink forgotten. “You must have misunderstood. He doesn’t feel that way about me. For God’s sake, I’ve known him forever. He literally used to babysit me.”

Aramis stares back at her. “How old were you?” he asks, suddenly sure this is important. “Back then. When you met him. How old?”

“Twelve, I suppose?” she says. “Eleven maybe. A bit old to need a babysitter, I know. But I have a lot of younger siblings, remember. That’s when Rochefort and I became friends. Or something like friends, anyway. He seemed so wise and all-knowing to me back then, even though he could only have been in his early twenties.”

All those paintings in Rochefort’s home. Some of them beautiful blonde angels, but the vast majority waifish blonde girls, teenaged or even younger. He’d thought they were rows of Alice in Wonderland, smiling down at him vapidly, but no – they were rows of Ana, versions of her as Rochefort saw her, innocent and young and smiling at him, angelically sweet. That wasn’t devotion, that was romantic fixation, creepy and horrifying. Ana said people fell in love with an idea of her – those paintings were Rochefort’s idea of her, perfect, saintly, untouchable and beautiful.

“He’s obsessed with you,” he realizes now, tense. “He has been since then. That son of a bitch.”

Marguerite had suspected Rochefort of illegal activities, and she’d disappeared. Lots of other people have suspected Rochefort of things without being abducted, and unlike Alvarez, Marguerite had nothing even resembling proof – without her disappearance, the case would have died anyway. But Marguerite was Ana’s friend, and if she’d gone to Ana about her concerns, Ana might have listened. So she’d had to disappear.

It’s the same with them. Rochefort doesn’t want Sestini arrested for the murder because otherwise they might get him. They have no proof, and he knows they have no proof. But if they charge him properly, then even if they fail to actually get him convicted and jailed, Ana might believe them, might realise he’s a murderer. He’s not covering his tracks, he’s not panicking, he’s just trying to shift Ana’s blame and suspicion permanently to another man. He’s willing to lie to anyone, hurt anyone, even kill anyone, provided it stops Ana’s fondness for him diminishing one iota.

Treville had even said there was something strange going on with Rochefort and Ana. But they’d been so distracted by everything else going wrong, he hadn’t thought much about it, hadn’t followed up on the statement. 

“Son of a _bitch_ ,” he says again, starting to look around wildly for what he knows has to be somewhere. Ana’s eyeing him in open concern. Those detailed files on her and Louis – not because they were his bosses, but because he’s in love with Ana and wanted to know every single thing she and her husband did. Rochefort probably has hundreds of files on people, but he hid those away from the office because even though they would look the same to anyone else, they were different to him. Because he knew what he was doing was stalking, even if it was by proxy. Those files were the important ones.

There it is. A person seemingly playing with their phone across the other side of the café, but actually taking pictures very subtly. The portly man walking near them that night on the street. Aramis realises the chain of events with a lurch of nausea – him reaching out to pull a leaf out of Ana’s hair, that man taking a picture and sending it, Rochefort confronting Aramis about what was going on.

What’s Rochefort going to think when he sees these pictures as well? Will he see what Ana’s doing with Aramis as a betrayal? Clearly, he’s come to terms with Louis, at least enough that Louis hasn’t met any unexpected accidents – unless, of course, that’s the eventual plan. But then, it’s easy to tell Ana’s not in love with Louis, and Louis is rich and powerful and has made Rochefort rich and powerful as well. Ana said that Rochefort thought that if she had to be in a loveless marriage, Louis was a good person to be in one with – what if he wasn’t referring to Louis’s relative inoffensiveness and harmlessness? What if he was talking about what she could get for them both materially? In his twisted mind, does he think they’re partners in crime, that Ana’s relationship with Louis is to help them both get ahead? Is his aim that someday when they unite it’ll be with Louis’s assets under their control? If that’s the case, then he’s not planning for Louis to live forever, but maybe he needs the man to survive a while longer so he’s given control of a few more companies.

Whereas Aramis is just a complication and a threat to Rochefort. What will the man do to Aramis when he realises what’s going on? What will he do to _Ana_? Will he see this as a betrayal of his love?

“Aramis. _Aramis_. What’s going on? What are you talking about?” Ana looks worried, blinking at him, already reaching out a gentle hand to try and comfort him from whatever this madness is.

He rears back from it, getting himself under control. “I’m about to kiss you,” he says, very quietly.

“You – what?”

“I’m gonna kiss you, and then you shove me away and slap me, _do you understand_? As hard as you can. Really sell it.” Aramis’s mind is racing. From a distance, it must already look like they’re arguing, all furious intensity and hissed words. “Then you yell at me – oh, I don’t know. How dare you. You bastard. Whatever you like, just make it very indignant. Ready? Right.”

For a brief, sweet moment, Ana melts into his embrace, and then suddenly her small hands are hard as she shoves him back with surprising force. He nearly trips over his chair and falls but manages to catch himself on the table at the last moment. “You fucking bastard,” she says viciously, loudly enough that heads turn from all around, and the noise of her slap almost seems to echo. It makes Aramis’s head reel and his eyes swim with tears that he blinks away. Normally he’d quite enjoy the sting, if it was in play, if he could respond to it with another kiss instead of pretend chagrin, passion instead of panic. Ana gives him a questioning tilt to her head as if asking if she’s done the right thing, and he tries to give her a reassuring look, but then she’s spitting fury at him again. “What’s _wrong_ with you? I told you I’m married! If you ever touch me again, I’ll have you arrested! No means no!”

She seems to be running out of steam, so with one last glare she turns and storms away. Out of the corner of his eye, Aramis can see the plump man’s interest. When Rochefort sees this, he’ll see his pure, trustworthy, and idealised love having her trust violated by a lecherous player. He’ll know she’s not at fault at all, and even think she’s in need of comfort, poor darling. Just the victim of a stupid, piggish man groping at her.

A man Rochefort warned against doing this exact thing, Aramis remembers with a jolt.

Ah. Well, at least now they know who Rochefort’s next victim is likely to be.

X_X_X_X

It’s nearly time for him to start getting ready for bed, and Athos being Athos, he’s decided he can do that tonight without any kind of assistance at all. Milady thinks her ex-husband is probably the only person in the world stubborn and pigheaded enough to try and _ignore_ a gunshot wound out of existence. It’s the most stressful thing about staying here, she’s finding – watching him try and pretend everything is fine when it manifestly isn’t.

He tries to straighten and groans before he’s even sitting up fully in the chair, and Milady feels her forehead crease in concern. “Do you need more painkillers?” He could have taken some two hours ago, but he’s been insistent about pushing the times further apart – more stubbornness.

He catches her arm before she can go and fetch some, and says, “I’m fine. Just a twinge.” She gives him a suspicious look. “I’m _fine_ ,” he insists again, and draws her towards him for a long, fierce kiss.

He’s obviously trying to distract her, but nevertheless, she’s distracted. He’s at least feeling well enough that he seems able to grope her a lot more comprehensively than yesterday. His hands travel and spread heat wherever they go and soon she’s moaning shamelessly into his mouth, clutching at him just as needily as he is at her.

“Well,” she says breathlessly when he breaks the kiss for a moment, and lets her tone turn wicked. “I’m sure I could find some way to take your mind off the discomfort -” She starts to try and shift to her knees, hand already sliding down the front of his trousers to pull out his cock for her attention. Her mouth waters at the thought of sucking him deep again, making him lose control, making him thrust against her tongue. 

“ _No_ ,” he almost pleads, gripping her waist to stop her and keep her up with him. “No, please, don’t -” He sounds so desperate for her to stop that for a second she’s confused, and then she makes the connection – Thomas, Thomas, he’s remembering _fucking_ Thomas. Or rather, remembering _her_ fucking Thomas. He’d caught them in nearly exactly that position, hadn’t he? Athos looks nauseous, horrified, disgusted by his memories, disgusted by _her_ -

She pulls away so quickly that her back hits the opposite wall with a dull thud, appalled and shocked, so sickened that every bit of lust shrivels and dies in an instant. She feels more stunned and winded than if he’d hit her, and he must see it, because he says in a frantic tone, “Anne – Anne, I’m sorry, I didn’t -”

And it’s the fact that _he’s_ apologising, now, for this, that breaks her self control, the tears springing into her eyes against her will. It feels like there’s a massive growth in her chest, snarling her lungs and choking her breathing. This is the one part of their break up that isn’t his fault at all, the thing which kicked off all the rest, the first domino that fell. She’d like to blame Thomas for pushing it over, for starting that inevitable chain reaction. She _does_ blame Thomas, in fact. But she blames herself as well, even though she wishes she didn’t, even though she hates to admit it, just like she hates to admit she was at fault in any way when she lied to Athos about her name and past. Her heartbeat is physically painful now. She’s had worse panic attacks, but it still isn’t pleasant, the way she can’t quite inhale deep enough, the way her limbs go numb, the way her mind turns in frantic little circles.

“Anne,” he says helplessly, staring at her expression.

She lets herself slide down the wall and curls up, chokes out, “Just give me a second, Athos.” She’s successful at fighting back her tears, but she knows her face is visibly working to do so, and she’s breathing too quickly and too painfully and her mouth is dry and her heart hurts and it’s like she’s choking. Never let your emotions show on your face, Armand always said, and here she is showing everything. This is undignified and embarrassing for her, these stupid attacks always have been, can’t Athos understand that? She just needs a minute to put her mask back on, to quell the unreasoning panic, to return to normal. She needs an hour, a day. Fuck, maybe she needs a _lifetime_ , one without him, one where she can just be the woman she’s been pretending to be lately. Milady de Winter, who was never anyone’s wife, who was never in love with anyone, who never lost it all. That woman doesn’t have weak spots, or regrets, or panic attacks. She’s sharp and ruthless and people mean nothing to her.

She’s worn a lot of masks in her life. When she was Anne de Breuil, she was sweet and loving and pretty, the perfect wife. Now she’s Milady de Winter, she’s clever and flirtatious and sexy, the perfect seductress. But they’re just… names, affectations, reputations. They’re parts of her, they’re her in specific situations, they’re versions of her that work for different people. They’re what other people see. Below that is her, the _real_ her, who is both of them at once, and a hundred other women she’s been before besides, as well as a lot of other things she never willingly lets anyone see. She’s not the perfect anything. She’s a mess of fears and triggers and traumas, full of regrets and anger and self-hatred, damaged and more than willing to damage other people in return. But she never wanted to damage him back then. Of course, she did anyway.

Instead of leaving, he slides down the wall next to her, so they’re sitting side by side, making a little grunt of pain as the new position strains his still-healing torso. Then he reaches out tentatively and draws her into his arms, and she doesn’t resist. No one’s held her like this in a very long time. Actually, no one’s ever held her like this except him, because she’s never let them, because they’ve never tried. She leans into him and she doesn’t let herself think of anything, and she absolutely does not cry, she just inhales the familiar scent of him and sits there silently, letting her panic slowly fade, her racing mind calm, her rapid breathing slow. He doesn’t say a word either, but she can tell from the way he’s breathing that she’s not the only one barely holding it together.

When she’s calmed down, when she feels she can survive seeing his expression, she turns her head to look at him. He looks like he’s gotten back his equilibrium as well, at least a little, but there’s still that worry in his eyes.

“You never told me why you got those,” he says finally.

She shrugs, breathing nearly back to normal. He’s the only person who’s ever been able to help when she has a panic attack, but to be fair, he’s the only person who’s ever really seen her have one – she’s used to seeing the signs of one bearing down on her and finding privacy. “Yes, I did. I told you I don’t know why I get them. I just always have. That’s the truth.”

Maybe she didn’t when she was a child, but if so, it’s too long ago to remember. Some things don’t have an easy explanation: _this happened, so this happened._ Some things just are. The list of triggers which can potentially cause them has grown longer over the years, but she still thinks they happen less now than they used to a decade ago. Five years ago when she was married to him she got even fewer, of course, and they were all relatively short and easily dealt with – apart from at the end, anyway. Right now she’s doing pretty well considering. She’s been dealing with near-continuous triggers since they started this investigation and this is her first actual attack, after all, which is damn near miraculous.

He drags in a deep breath. “I think we need to talk about it. What happened with Thomas, I mean.” He looks sick again just at the thought.

“Now? _Now_ you want to talk about it?” Five years ago he hadn’t let her say a single word. She’d been all but dead to him from the moment he walked in on it. And then the other day he’d made it clear that he was done talking about that part of their past.

“Yes,” he says, quietly and wretchedly. “I’m sorry, but yes. I think it’s pretty clear from what just happened that neither of us are over what happened five years ago. You said you needed closure. Well, I need that too. I need to know what happened, why you – I need to know what went wrong. It doesn’t have to be this moment, I can wait until you feel up to it, we can even talk about it on neutral ground instead of here if you want, but please, it has to be sometime. I don’t want – I don’t want to live with all these questions anymore. And what you said the other day… I need to _know_.”

She sucks in a deep breath, lets it out slowly. “No. Now is fine.” It’s not like this conversation will be any more pleasant at any other time. “Ask me whatever you want. But I’m going to grab a drink. A strong one.”

He waves his hand towards the kitchen, staying leaning against the wall.

“I’ll get you one as well,” she says, because she already knows he’ll need it, medication or not. A small drink, maybe, but there’s no way he’s getting through this without some liquor. However, that’s all she’s certain of – she has no idea how else he’ll react, what he’ll think of the story, if he’ll even believe her after everything. She’s fucked him over quite a few times, what with one thing or another, and the fact that lately she’s fucked him as well only helps her case so far. Sex is sex, not trust, and he’s made it abundantly clear he only wants one of those two things with her.

“Were you sleeping with him before you met me?”

Milady blinks at him, surprised by the question, and by the way he said it, as if each word was a stone and he was deliberately dropping them one by one. Apparently, he’s not easing his way gently into this. “No,” she says, just as bluntly, passing him the drink. “I was just his secretary. I mean, he acted like he was in _Mad Men_ sometimes, flirting, patting me on the ass, that kind of thing, but whenever he got close to making a real pass I side-stepped it.”

He blinks at her, but some of the tension in his face eases at the rest of it. “That’s sexual harassment. You could have sued him. He’s a lawyer, surely he knows better than that -”

“No, I couldn’t have sued him,” she says. “And he damn well knew it, too, the bastard. He was always aware I was a bit dodgy – I had nothing but gaps in my work history, I needed to be paid under the table, and the man who recommended me wasn’t exactly respectable. I think Thomas thought I was a former mistress of his, actually – which wasn’t as wrong as it could be, I suppose. But anyway, working as a secretary was supposed to be a new start for me. Legitimate work. I wasn’t planning to sleep with the boss.”

He flinches just a little at the last words. “Then – when did it start?”

She’s fidgeting. She never fidgets. She puts the glass down to try and stop, then picks it up again and takes a deep drink. “It was just the once. The time you walked in on.”

“Really.” He looks extremely doubtful about this – like he wants to believe her, but can’t bring himself to.

“Really.” She doesn’t try and look convincing, well aware that there’s nothing that will convince him less than seeing her radiating trustworthiness, after all the times she’s lied. It’s the truth, but she doesn’t think that helps much. “I didn’t… it wasn’t… I didn’t want him. I wanted you.”

“Then why?” This question sound like it’s wrenched out of him painfully, all hurt and incomprehension. “Why did you do it?”

She puts the glass down again, forces herself to stop fidgeting, to look at him. Her mouth is dry. This is the part she knows is going to go bad, and she can taste the sour vomit in her mouth like it’s five years ago and she’s walking into that room, her past about to be shoved in her face and used against her once more. “I didn’t have a choice,” she says, and knows it’s bullshit even as she says it. She did have a choice, it was just that all the options were awful.

He lets out a harsh bark of pained laughter, standing and turning away even though he has to lean against the counter to stay upright and she knows straightening must hurt like a bitch. Bullet wounds aren’t easy to recover from. What she did isn’t either. “What, were things that bad between us? If you wanted to leave, if you wanted to end it -”

“No, I mean -” She breaks off, steadies her breathing. Her earlier panic attack wrung her out, she can’t afford to have another. Sometimes she can hold them back, to an extent. “He was blackmailing me.”

“He – what?”

“He was blackmailing me,” she repeats. “You remember how I gave him my two weeks’ notice? It’s because he was getting more inappropriate. He kept grinning at me, and it wasn’t a nice kind of grin, trust me. He also kept touching me, just little touches, but it was creepy. I would’ve told you, but it was your brother, and he hadn’t really done anything. So I told him I quit. And then four days later -”

“Five days later,” Athos says automatically, looking like he’s still trying to process her previous statements.

“No, four days later,” she says. “He handed me a file, and it was everything on me, and he said he was planning to turn me in.” She swallows bile, and wraps her arms around herself, surprised to find she’s shivering. “I would’ve gone to jail. Or worse, been killed before I got there, thanks to Sarazin’s friends on the force. And Thomas said there was one way I could convince him not to.”

Athos looks sickened, disbelieving, but not yet furious. She can sense it beneath the surface, though.

“I told him I’d tell you.” She can’t remember why she was so sure Athos could have reined Thomas in, could have stopped him, but some part of her still believes it. If nothing else, maybe he could’ve hired Richelieu away from Thomas and had him get rid of the evidence, which she sure as hell wouldn’t have been able to afford. “He said you wouldn’t believe me, not after everything, and that all that would happen is you’d end up being the one to arrest me. I thought he was right. I couldn’t have taken that. I just couldn’t…”

She couldn’t take seeing the love in his eyes disappear as he realised who he’d really married, couldn’t take that final nail in the coffin of her naïve hope that maybe someday he could love her as she was, messed up and ruthless and dark. Deep down, she’d always known he would never feel the same way about that woman as he did about the pretty façade. Anne de Breuil had been such a beautiful fiction, made up of everything good inside herself she could find, with every scummy, selfish, greedy, cruel part of her carefully hidden away. Flawless, just like she thought he was. She knew the story of her past would smash that pretty pretence to smithereens.

“So you agreed to that?” Athos says, and she can already see part of him shifting into cop mode, because that’s easier. She wishes she could do that, but she’s had five years for the blanketing effects of shock to gradually erode. “That’s – Anne, that’s rape. Rape by extortion. That’s illegal.”

She ignores this. The words are harsh, and in some ways accurate, but when she looks back on it she always thinks of herself as complicit in what happened – much like with Sarazin, anything else makes her feel like a victim. While she sometimes denies her agency, tries to pretend she had no choice in some of the things she’s done, secretly she’s always felt that every single act was her choice and that she often chose poorly. She might be a cruel, traitorous bitch, but in some strange way that’s better than seeing herself as powerless. And the truth is, there are many things she _has_ been complicit in over the years, terrible, cruel, amoral things. What’s one more added to the pile?

“I told him you were waiting for me at home, but I’d see him tomorrow.” She remembers that night, what a wreck she was, the panic attack that wrung her out so badly all she could do was lie in bed and stare blankly at the ceiling. She remembers wondering if he would come home early and see how pale and sick she looked and ask her what was wrong, wondering if she’d tell him if he did, almost hoping for it – the house of cards finally falling down completely. “It was a lie, of course, at least the first part was. You had late shift, remember? Then afterwards you just crashed, and you were still asleep when I left the next day. So I went into work and I told Thomas once. Only once, and he’d bury the files forever and tell me where he’d gotten them, that was the deal.”

Athos shakes his head at her, face ashen. He’s looking at her like he’s never seen her before, but his reply, when it comes out, is still in his cop voice. “You can’t have seriously believed he’d agree to that. Why would he back off when he still had evidence against you?”

“I wasn’t planning to rely on his good nature,” she says, a little sharply. “I also wasn’t planning to sleep with him. I was recording him. I knew he’d brag. His type always do. And I thought then I’d have proof of him trying to blackmail me into sex.”

“And you’d go to the cops?”

“No.” She can see his expression at this, and resists the urge to get even sharper, since it’s not his fault. “Athos, _normal_ rape cases have next to no chance of succeeding, an attempted rape by extortion one was doomed from the start. He’d say it was dirty talk or entrapment or whatever he wanted, and he’d get out of it easily. But he wanted to be a politician, remember? Not a good look, trying to force your sister-in-law into sex.” Of course, men have gotten into public office after worse, but Thomas would’ve lost Catherine, her father, and all her father’s connections too.

“You were going to blackmail him in return.”

“Mutual destruction. He brings me down, I bring him down. Only it…” She falters. “It didn’t work out like that, obviously. It took longer than I thought it would to get the proof. It went further. And then you turned up.”

She should have stopped it, of course. But she’d been so _close_ to getting out of it without any consequences, without losing anything – Thomas had been crowing about his success for the recorder on her phone even as Athos walked through the door. And while it was traumatising to have her past shoved in her face again after she thought it was gone forever, what he wanted wasn’t in itself that traumatising to her. Put bluntly, she’d experienced worse. Until Athos sex had generally been a commodity to her, her body one of the most useful tools in her arsenal, and it was automatic to fall back into using it that way. Somewhere in the back of her mind, behind the panic, behind the fierce need to survive and escape unscathed, she’d known her husband would never see it that way. But she also thought Athos would never have to know. She’d protect herself, and protect his illusions about who she was, and in doing so protect their relationship and the life they had together. 

It had all seemed so logical, and then he’d been actually in the room, the realisation, horror and betrayal bright in his gaze, and she could no longer see it that way. There was no logic in the face of that stare. Then she’d seen something in his eyes die, heard the crack of his breaking heart, chased him as he walked blindly out of there like his world was crumbling around him. She’d been a mess, crying and trying desperately to stop him, and he had politely pushed her away like a stranger and driven home without her, and Thomas had been there panicking and saying “fuck” over and over again like that would help anything, and she’d stumbled away with no real destination in mind except to get away from there and no plans where to go after. And that – well, that was that.

“And if I hadn’t walked in on it? What did you think the next step there was? You thought you’d just come home? Pretend it had been a normal day at the office? Add one more thing to your list of lies?” He still looks like he’s in shock, pale and horrified, but his voice is an awful, strangled noise, full of a dozen conflicting feelings. “We’d go to Thomas and Catherine’s dinner parties, and you’d sit across the table from him and drink wine and make small talk? He’d know every single bit of your chequered past and what you were willing to do to keep in under wraps, and you’d know my brother was a rapist and a blackmailer, and I would sit there smiling and have no clue?”

“Yes,” she says bleakly, and the word claws its way out her throat, leaving her voice scratchy and useless. “Something like that.”

He looks at her, ashen and trembling, his eyes wild and uncomprehending, leaning heavily on the counter like it’s the only thing holding him up. He tries to push himself fully upright again but slumps with a groan. “I need a moment. Could you just…”

It takes her a second to understand the meaning of how he jerks his head at her, but then she nods and walks into the bathroom to give him privacy, closes and locks the door calmly, then stuffs her fist in her mouth and curls up like she’s the one with the aching wound. She thinks of him five years ago when he walked in on them, how she broke him and them and herself. She thinks of him on that night weeks later, how he set whatever was left on fire. She thinks about the bullet he took in the chest, and the expression on his face right now, and all the times their kisses have tasted like blood.

She can also remember the good times, just as vividly, sometimes even more vividly, but right now those taste of blood as well. They crawled inside each other so easily and so completely back then, and that only made it easier to tear each other apart.

The trouble is, once you’ve loved someone that awfully, that abjectly, you’re never really alone in your skin again. There’s no way to untangle yourself from them, because the _you_ that existed at the beginning isn’t there anymore, because you changed irreversibly at the quantum level, the motes of your body mixing and melding with theirs. Oh, she’s still an individual, still herself (and isn’t that _wonderful_ , she thinks sourly), but he’s always present, even if it’s just through her own longing for him. Loving him changed her. He became a part of her, and she’s always been prone to self-destruction.

She stays there for a long time, trying to focus on her breathing, trying to ignore how much everything hurts, as if she’s run a marathon instead of just telling an old story, one that changes nothing. Why does it still matter? They’re fucked up, whatever caused it, whatever started the chain reaction.

Maybe it just matters because she wishes they weren’t. It’s been so _good_ , lately, in spite of the arguments and the awkward conversations, because those moments have been short little interludes in between them making love, and bantering with each other, and cuddling in bed, and fixing each other meals, and trying to solve this stupid case. She no longer feels like she has to run every single sentence through her head before she says it now – that’s what she used to do, checking just in case it contained something that contradicted her story, who she was, where she was from. They’re sharper with each other, harder, realer, but that doesn’t always equate to being cruel anymore. They’re learning to be soft again, too, and that’s even stranger. She knows she has to leave him, she’s not an idiot, but she wishes she were stupid enough to stay instead. She wishes he wanted her to stay.

Eventually she stops shaking and leaves the bathroom, ready to head back into it or even leave the apartment entirely if he needs more time without her here, but when she opens her mouth to ask she pauses and frowns. There’s no one there.

It takes her only moments to check the whole place. He’s nowhere. She goes to the underground parking for the building and his car’s missing from its spot, as well. Fuck, he shouldn’t be standing yet, and he certainly shouldn’t be driving. _Fuck_. He could be at a pub, but she knows somehow he’s not, because there’s no reason to drive to a pub, there’s one right around the corner. How far is Pinon from here? Eight hours’ drive, something like that. More, maybe. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

She can’t drive, so she can’t follow him, not quickly, anyway. And she’s not even sure he’ll want to see her right now – smart money is on no. But if he’s going to do something stupid – something _criminally_ stupid, probably, not to mention while still suffering a serious injury –

There’s only one of Athos’s friends she thinks can be discreet, can get involved without making this worse, can help without needing to know exactly what he’s helping with.

Milady makes the call.

“You said you owe me, and that you’re my friend,” she says quickly, the moment he picks up, no other greeting, no lead-up. “I expect you to prove it. So here’s what I need you to do – firstly, don’t ask me any follow-up questions. Not ‘why’ or ‘what happened’ or anything like that. Secondly, you can’t tell anyone else. When the others ask where you were tonight and tomorrow morning, you’re going to lie.”

If it was Aramis, he’d probably make a risqué joke at this point, but she can tell just by the way his breathing catches that Porthos has worked out this is something deadly serious, and not the right time to ask if the favour is some kind of exceptionally kinky one night stand. Nevertheless, she continues, her voice shaking slightly, “Do you understand?”


	18. Better Safe Than Sorry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 9 in the morning and already well over thirty degrees celsius... this may be the day I actually melt

Porthos has never been a fast driver. Besides anything else, his car isn’t exactly designed for going quickly. Or for going long distances, come to think of it. It’s a city car. Small, easy to park, great at turning corners unexpectedly, excellent brakes. Not a very strong engine.

Tonight, though, he drives quickly, and he also drives without stops apart from for fuel, and despite that he still has no idea if he’ll beat Athos there. He was smart enough to grab police lights and pop them on top, so at least no one will stop him for speeding, but there’s no way he can drive as fast as Athos usually does without ending up in a fiery car crash, and if that happens he definitely won’t get there in time. He might not know what this is about, but anything that makes Milady’s voice shake like that can’t be good.

Still, Athos won’t endanger anyone, surely? The man’s on heavy painkillers, maybe he’ll at least stick to the speed limit for once.

It’s a long, long night, and Porthos’s whole body is heavy with exhaustion by the time he gets to the address he was given. It’s the kind of suburbia he’s always instinctively disliked, not just because it’s the kind of place where people like him get suspicious glances, but because it looks like they could shoot a remake of _Stepford Wives_ or _American Beauty_ there. The grass is manicured and even in the darkness it seems artificially green, it appears that someone’s scrubbed the street until it shines, and the houses look like they all came as a set.

“Fucking Duloc,” he mutters to himself as he opens the car door, surveying the absolute perfection of it all with deep suspicion. He’s not normally a negative person, but this is all very stressful. Every bone and muscle in his body aches from the long drive. He’s beginning to think d’Artagnan has a point about the size of his car. If he owned a giant four wheel drive his back would probably feel less like a capital C.

The house is slightly larger than most of the others, and he considers knocking with a deep sense of foreboding. It’s – ugh – past three in the morning, and he has no idea who lives there except that they’re somehow involved with Athos having a breakdown, but the ugly flamingo ornaments set rigidly into the grass at mathematically precise intervals makes him think they’re not the type of person who likes surprises. Anyway, Milady said if Athos was already there, he’d know it, and he can’t see his friend’s car anywhere, so maybe waiting is a better idea. If Athos doesn’t turn up by daybreak he’ll have to go something else, though, maybe even to the hotel, because he has a sneaking suspicion otherwise someone will call the cops on him even though he visibly has police lights on his car right now.

As it turns out, it’s twenty minutes later that Athos’s car pulls in across the street, and Porthos is moving over to intercept him before Athos has managed to so much as stumble out of the car. He’s an absolute wreck, much worse than Porthos, barely able to move. That makes sense when you consider he was shot a few days ago and just drove cross-country, but it’s clearly more than that – his eyes are swollen, his hair and clothes rumpled and messy, his face slackened and dead-looking, his colour off, everything about him just slightly wrong. It’s very concerning. Porthos has seen Athos messed up before, but never like this – it activates every one of his internal alarms, makes him almost wish he had hospital restraints for the man, or that he could just knock him out.

“Porthos?” Athos says, narrowing reddened eyes as he tries to take in his friend. Porthos quickly confiscates the car keys from him, steers Athos neatly around to the passenger’s side and efficiently installs him in the seat, puts the child lock on and closes the door.

Athos is in pain, exhausted and slow enough that it takes him thirty seconds to start protesting, and by then Porthos has already locked him in and started up the car. “We should get going,” he says with an attempt at cheerfulness. “This place is creepy, and judging by the look of you, this visit wasn’t going anywhere good.” 

“This has nothing to do with you,” Athos snaps. “It’s… family business. How did you even -” He cuts himself off with a groan that’s as much pain as it is exasperation, hand going to his side. “Anne called you. Why did Anne call you?”

“I dunno, mate,” he says, keeping his eyes on the road. “I really don’t. Here’s what I do know – Milady’s booked us a twin room in a hotel less than an hour away. So let’s just go there instead, eh? Get some sleep. Head home tomorrow... well, later today.” God knows he’s not returning Athos’s car keys whatever happens, and he can confiscate his friend’s phone as well to stop him calling a taxi or something foolish. He might have a problem if Athos was uninjured, but at present, Porthos is pretty sure he can keep him in check. Keep him from doing… whatever the hell it is Milady thinks he was going to do.

“When you say you don’t know…” Athos says slowly, looking so tired it’s a struggle even to form words.

“No questions was part of the deal.” Porthos shrugs. He stops at a stop sign and gives Athos another once-over. “And I don’t wanna break that, but Athos, please tell me that’s not a gun in your pocket.”

“Well, I think I’m made it clear I’m _not_ happy to see you, so yes, it’s my service weapon.” Athos’s voice sounds dry, but it cracks a little at the end.

“Right.” Porthos drives the rest of the way there in total silence, because otherwise he’ll really start asking questions, and he promised not to. He’s going to have to drive Athos and Athos’s car back to the city, he’s somehow sure of it – after some rest, because right now he’s wiped. God knows how he’ll get his own car back home.

He has to help Athos up to the room. The floor’s cracked linoleum and the beds are oddly damp, but it could be worse, and on the tiny, peeling wooden table there’s a bottle of expensive-looking scotch in an ice bucket and two glasses waiting for them that definitely aren’t part of the standard package.

Athos gives a dry laugh when he sees them. “So she wants me to talk to you.”

“Nah, she said no questions.”

“I suspect she said not to ask _her_ questions. If she just wanted me to get some sleep and be dragged back home by you in the morning, she would have sent you with my medication and painkillers,” Athos says, with the odd certainty that so often accompanies his pronouncements about his ex-wife. “Instead, she organised twenty-five-year-old scotch.”

Porthos pauses, then pulls out his phone and texts Milady to let her know he has Athos and everything’s fine, and thanks for the scotch. The reply comes in seconds and just says to enjoy it, which doesn’t really give him a clue what she wants, so then he texts her ‘in vino veritas’ with a question mark at the end. She sends back a thumbs up emoji.

Oh good, so she didn’t just conscript him for a night of driving long distance and having to forcibly stop his friend from going on some kind of insane rampage. She also wants him to play therapist, or possibly marriage counsellor. He spares a moment to wonder longingly if this is something that could be discussed tomorrow, but Porthos has never put his friends’ needs second to his own before, and he’s not going to start now.

“Well then,” he says instead, and pours them both a drink. “Find a comfortable position that doesn’t make your wound hurt more, have a few glasses, and then tell me why you drove all night to get to a small town in the middle of nowhere, in order to break into a mansion with a gun.”

“It’s my brother’s house. And I was planning to knock, in fact.”

Porthos tries to remember if he knew Athos had a brother. He doesn’t think it ever came up. “Doesn’t really explain the gun.”

Athos stares at him, then downs the whole glass, and passes it back to Porthos to refill. “This is difficult. It’s not just my story, and I don’t know what bits I have the right to say.”

“You say she wants you to talk. If that’s true, I reckon she’d be fine with you talking. Not like I’m gonna tell anyone else.” He meets Athos’s strangely dull gaze with his own fiercely honest one. “Now tell me why you brought a gun.”

“I actually… don’t know.” He looks faintly perplexed, which at least gives the answer an air of honesty. “You know I usually keep it on me, along with my badge and cuffs.”

“Uh-huh. And do you have your badge and cuffs?”

“No.” There’s a long pause, and Athos drains another glass. “I probably wouldn’t have shot him.”

“Probably. Well, that’s a relief. What _happened_?”

Athos sits motionless for a while, just staring at his drink, and then says, “You’ve probably gathered that my marriage didn’t end well.”

_Didn’t end at all, from what I’ve seen, unless you count legally,_ Porthos thinks but doesn’t say. It’s not in a good place, that much is obvious, but nothing that’s truly over could still be this visible, this painful, this _present_. He had thought things were getting a bit better, though, just based on the way they no longer talked to each other like they were throwing knives. _Guess I was wrong._

“I thought – I thought we were happy.” Athos sounds almost bewildered by this, but then his voice firms, becomes more certain. “I mean – we _were_ happy. So impossibly, stupidly happy. I didn’t think that kind of happiness existed until I found it by random chance, it was like winning the lottery without ever buying a ticket, only a thousand times better. Every day was more amazing then the one before. And then one morning – I hadn’t seen her the night before because I had a late shift, and I woke up and she was already at work, and I thought, it’s been more than twenty-four hours since I’ve been in the same room as her without one of us being asleep. Ridiculous. So I went to take her out to lunch. And walked in on – well, I thought I knew what I walked in on. Apparently, I didn’t.”

“Okay,” Porthos says slowly, since Athos seems to be waiting for some kind of response, but he’s not entirely sure what the other man’s talking about. If he had to guess, he’d say Milady cheated, but that’s just based on divorce statistics and several weeks of watching Athos stiffen every time his ex-wife mentions another man. A woman who suicidally throws herself at a psycho with a gun to protect her ex doesn’t seem like a woman who’d cheat – but on the other hand, people are complicated and from the sound of it, so is this situation.

Porthos has never heard Athos speak as much, or so quickly, the words frantically tumbling over themselves. His eyes are bloodshot and wild and he gestures uncontrollably as he speaks, slopping expensive scotch onto his hand and the table. “But now I know what happened, and I know it wasn’t what I thought it was, and I – am I still allowed to be mad at her? It wasn’t her idea, but it _was_ her choice. She made a choice. She should have – she could have – I don’t know what I would’ve done, but she could’ve come to me. But does that mean I’m blaming the victim? But I was also the victim, and I just – I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel about any of this.”

“Think you’re allowed to feel however you feel.”

“Really.”

Porthos shrugs. “You can’t control how you feel. What you do about it, that’s the bit that matters.”

It has a worse effect then he could possibly have predicted. Athos stares at him in silence for two heartbeats, and then slumps over the table, glass falling to the floor, his head in his hands, fingers clutching at his hair like he wants to tear it up by the roots. He’s shaking, and for a moment Porthos thinks he’s crying, but then he recognises the terrible, unearthly noise as laughter. Athos is laughing into the table, and it’s a horrible, agonised noise, scraping against his ears, and this seems like the kind of laughter people die of.

“Fuck,” Porthos says with feeling but with no idea what’s going on. He tops up his own glass and forces Athos’s head up again, grabs the other man’s hand and wraps it around the glass, and says, “Athos, have another drink.” He’s never tried to get his friend drunk before – Athos has always been able to manage it perfectly well on his own. But right now Athos seems like he needs the blurring effects of alcohol.

After a while, the laughter subsides, and Athos downs this new drink as well. Then he looks at Porthos and says bluntly, “I hurt her.”

“Well, it sounds like she hurt you too -”

“No, you don’t understand. Physically. I hurt her physically.”

“You -” Porthos cuts off the incredulous response before he can finish it, but it still echoes in his mind. _You can’t have_. Athos is one of his closest friends, almost his brother, the most important person in the world to him after Aramis. They’ve known each other half a decade. If anyone besides Athos had said that he was capable of assaulting a woman, let alone one he clearly loves, Porthos would either have laughed at them in complete disbelief or ordered them to get out of his presence. Athos is a _good person_ , and good people don’t do things like that. Unless - “Why? Did she – I mean, did she start it? Hit you? Was it a reflex?”

“No. I was yelling, and then she was yelling back, and then -” Athos downs his drink with a kind of manic desperation. “I was drunk, and angry, and vicious, and she was right there. And it was _bad_. Brutal. I choked her.”

“You… choked her,” Porthos repeats, because he has no idea what to say now. God, he almost wishes Athos would return to being super vague. How’s he supposed to respond to that? He can’t say it’s okay, because clearly, it’s not. He can’t say Athos is one of his best friends and he’d forgive him for anything, even if that’s true, because this isn’t something that it’s Porthos’s place to forgive.

“I loved her. More than anything. And I still did it.” He takes the bottle from Porthos’s unresisting grip and takes a drink directly from it. “I should be in fucking jail.”

“Why aren’t you?” Not that he wants Athos to be in jail, but it’s a reasonable question, he thinks.

“I thought I would be.” Athos doesn’t look like this idea bothered him much, even looks like he might have welcomed it. “But Anne just… disappeared. Signed all the divorce papers and vanished. You can’t charge for a crime with no victim, even if I’d gone in and admitted it, and at the time I was still in denial about how bad it was. Partly because I was still so _angry_ , and partly because it all happened in a sort of haze. I was – very out of it, that night. Things were blurry. Messy.” He looks at the bottle in his hand with a sort of hatred. “Haven’t changed much, have I?”

Porthos is not remotely equipped for this conversation. For any conversation like this. Part of him – the most loyal part of him – wants to reassure Athos, make it clear that he doesn’t blame him in any way, look for more mitigating circumstances, turn it into something that’s not really his friend’s fault. Another part, though, knows that won’t help. That’s all about his own comfort – he doesn’t want to have to see his friend differently.

Since he doesn’t know what to say, Porthos brings the conversation back around to the original point, deciding to deal with his own tangled thoughts later. “Can you explain to me the bit where all this led to you going armed for a family visit?”

“My brother… also hurt her,” Athos says after a pause. “Differently than I did. I know it wouldn’t fix anything, but I quite liked the idea of kicking his head in for it.”

“Yeah, it wouldn’t fix anything,” Porthos agrees, a little sharply, because Athos is in no condition to brawl and the fact that he brought a gun means he was probably planning something a bit more extreme than that anyway. “If there’s any way to make things right with her, it has to be about what she wants, not what makes _you_ feel better.”

“Sometimes you fuck up so badly there’s nothing you can do to make it right,” Athos says with finality.

“Bullshit.”

“What?”

“That’s bullshit. Yeah, maybe you can’t change the past. But are you really telling me that every fuck-up should be a life sentence? Because if you are, you shouldn’t be a cop. I used to run into cops like that all the time in my street days and they were bloody terrifying. You have to believe people can make up for the shit they do, no matter how bad it is.” 

Of course, given recidivism rates, if there is such a thing as redemption then they’re not really providing the right path to it for many people. But Porthos knows people can change, because he was a criminal, and now he’s not. And he knows people can make up for what they’ve done, because Treville’s made some terrible mistakes in the past (however good his intentions might have been) and he’s still one of the best men Porthos knows.

“So what do you think fixes something like this, then?” There’s something almost mocking about the question, but Porthos ignores the tone.

“Admitting it seems like a good start. Apologising. I don’t know, anger management classes perhaps? Trying to make amends however you can. Maybe ask _her_ what she wants from you, what she needs.” Porthos tilts his head slightly to the side, surveys his friend. “You didn’t say much about what she did, but I’m guessing you aren’t the only one trying to make up for the past.”

Sometimes, when Milady watches Athos while she’s admitting something she’s done, like when she was telling them she lied about the information she originally brought them or relating all the details of her meetings with Rochefort, there’s as much guilt as wariness in her eyes. And her tone earlier had certainly seemed like she blamed herself for this strange excursion.

There’s a very, very long silence, where Athos doesn’t drink at all, just stares straight ahead. And then, “Maybe not,” he admits quietly.

X_X_X_X

“Where the hell _are_ they?”

“I’m sure they’ll be here soon,” Milady says, leaning against a desk and rolling her eyes at Aramis’s dramatics. “Regardless, you don’t have to finish roll-call before explaining why you have your tighty-whities in such a twist.” She tilts her head to the side and narrows her eyes. “Although now I’ve said that, I’m actually switching my guess to you being the commando type.”

“I agree with her,” d’Artagnan says for what must be the first time ever, and both of their gazes swing to him. “Not about going commando. The other bit. If you’re going to pace the room and swear, you may as well tell us why you’re doing it.”

Aramis hesitates, but before he can reply, the door swings open and Porthos staggers in, half supporting an exhausted-looking Athos. “Where have you been?” he demands, turning on them.

“Hungover,” Porthos says, with a glance at Milady that’s so lightning-quick d’Artagnan barely catches it. “I texted.”

Athos moves to collapse into the nearest chair, his gaze swinging to Milady’s. There’s some moment of silent communication, a question and answer, and then she moves to stand next to the chair, her hand settling on the back of it. “You’re not supposed to drink with your medication,” she murmurs quietly, a slight twist of humour in her voice.

“I’m going to refrain from pointing out the hypocrisy of that comment,” Athos says in his driest tone, but the look he gives her is almost fond.

“This is _important_ ,” Aramis insists. “I figured out what Rochefort is after – well, no, not exactly. I figured out why he killed – hmm. Alright, not that either. But I know something we didn’t know before.” He brightens, coming up with something concrete. “I know why he abducted Marguerite!”

“Marguerite… Sale?” Milady ventures, after a few moments. “I rather thought he abducted her because she was trying to get him arrested.”

“She had next to nothing,” Athos says. “It was an overreaction. A misstep, even. Risky and unnecessary. Are you saying he had another reason?”

“He’s in love with Ana,” Aramis says.

“What, that creepy crush of his?” Milady says dismissively, and they all turn to look at her again. She shrugs. “She’s his type, that’s all. You know, blonde, sweet, innocent-looking, easy to idolise. He dated a few women like that in the time I worked for Richelieu, though ‘dated’ is almost certainly the wrong word. I mean, they’re normally a lot younger than Madame de –”

“She’s _exactly_ his type,” Aramis spells out. “She _created_ his type. He’s been in love with her since she was _twelve_.”

Twelve. Well, that’s nightmarish. Constance isn’t going to be happy when d’Artagnan tells her about this. He doesn’t entirely know how it happened, but it appears his fiancée and the richest woman in the country have become besties practically overnight. He came home a few nights ago to find them a couple of bottles of wine down and got roped into Constance’s impromptu tipsy self-defence class as the pretend attacker. He still has the bruises. Apparently, she’s now invited to their tiny wedding. He hasn’t had the chance to mention this to Aramis yet.

“So your theory is that he removed Marguerite from the picture before she could explain her suspicions to Madame de Bourbon?” Athos asks.

He looks so wrecked d’Artagnan feels a pang of real fear, and wonders if there’s any way they could convince him to go home and sleep. What the hell was Porthos thinking, going out and drinking with him last night? That’s the _last_ thing Athos needs right now. He was shot less than a week ago, for God’s sake. 

Aramis takes a deep breath and launches into what he thinks is going on. Rochefort is obsessed with Ana and believes she reciprocates his feelings, the files on her and Louis that d’Artagnan had almost forgotten are from him stalking her by proxy, the paintings dotted around his house are all pictures of her, and he thinks that someday Rochefort’s going to try and take out the third arm of what he seems to think of as a love triangle.

“You mean he plans to kill Louis de Bourbon,” Athos says flatly. He considers it for a moment, then inclines his head slightly in agreement. “Makes sense. But why wait?”

“For that promotion he’s supposed to get soon,” Aramis says. “Obviously.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Milady says with great and obvious patience. “If Louis dies, whoever ends up the main trustee for Louis’s son can just remove Rochefort from his position.”

“Well, if it’s Ana, he probably thinks she’ll keep him there.”

“In which case, she’d also have the power to put him there in the first place, so why wait?” Milady shakes her head, looking suddenly paler. “But no. That’s not it. Richelieu was the trustee, before he died. He would’ve gotten control of the company. That must be _why_ he died. He would’ve gotten in the way of Rochefort keeping his position – hell, if Armand knew Rochefort killed Louis, he’d hunt the man down himself.”

“You said that Louis and Richelieu were like family the other day,” Athos says slowly. “I didn’t know that, though. I thought the same thing everyone did – that Richelieu was just using the de Bourbons for his own gain.”

“Oh, there was some of that in it,” Milady waves a hand, trying to explain. “Armand wasn’t very good at relationships. The thing about him is that it was never about wealth or fame – it was about _influence_. Leverage. People owed him favours and he made them pay it to other people who then owed him favours as well. He farmed them. Louis was a positive cornucopia.”

“Yes, it sounds like he was very fond of Louis,” Aramis deadpans.

She hisses out a breath, seeming exasperated with them all. “He was, he just… Armand thought big picture. Very big. He liked everything planned, controlled, monitored. Checks and balances. If you see a corrupt CEO, you arrest him. If Armand did, he leveraged them into quitting or retiring or selling. Quieter. Less destructive. He… finessed. Even if he’d hated Louis, he would never have let him get _assassinated_. Too disorderly. Armand hated disorder.”

“You don’t sound like you agree with that viewpoint.”

“I agreed with the results. But I concentrate on the smaller picture. Much smaller. That’s why we worked so well together. Running the world isn’t really an incentive to me.” She gives Athos another one of those unreadable looks, and he returns it – d’Artagnan has no idea what they’re communicating, and he feels unreasonably annoyed by that.

“Okay, so Rochefort takes out Richelieu in the hope that either he or Ana become trustee, then he can kill Louis and marry his widow without losing anything to Richelieu,” Porthos summarises neatly. 

“No.” Athos shakes his head. “They were arguing, remember, and Richelieu was looking for something Rochefort had in his possession. My guess would be that Richelieu caught wind of what Rochefort was up to, decided to find proof of it, and that forced Rochefort to advance his timetable. The killing was a rush job, messy, and he got lucky that it went as well as it did.”

“Makes sense,” Aramis agrees. “Unfortunately, that still doesn’t give us anything useful. All guesses, speculation.”

“Maybe not,” Athos says thoughtfully. “Now we know what he wants, and he doesn’t know we know.”

X_X_X_X

“I see.” Ana stares at him, face pale and jaw set.

“I know it must be hard to believe…” Aramis says.

He’s just finished telling her everything they’ve figured out about Rochefort. In return, she’s told him a few things he didn’t know, including that it was Rochefort who fed Ana those stories about Aramis’s history with women, and that they were presented in the worst light possible. Yet another reason to punch the other man out, he thinks viciously. Of course, the expression on Ana’s face is a better reason by far. 

“It is,” she admits. “But you wouldn’t tell me if _you_ didn’t believe it, and I believe in you. I love you.”

Only not enough to leave her husband, apparently. He doesn’t say it – she’s upset right now, and he knows he’s coming across as a broken record, but he can’t help his frustration. He can’t magically fix his past mistakes – yes, he’s broken up relationships before. He’s done things he’s not proud of. He’s not pretending otherwise. Yes, she’s married, and she has a child, and a job, and that’s all very complicated and very difficult. But it’s been well over a year since the first time they kissed, since they crossed that line. Surely, surely, it’s time for her to make a choice. She knows how she feels about him, she knows how she feels about Louis.

Except apparently, she thinks how she feels isn’t something to base her relationship choices on, which he finds somewhat confusing. Leaving someone because you don’t love them makes sense to him. Leaving someone because you love someone else, also reasonable. Both of those are true here. Ana seems to be waiting for something else, some kind of confirmation that her life will be just as stable with him instead of Louis, or just as simple, or just as safe. Not just for her son, which he could sort of understand, but for herself. This isn’t something Aramis has ever considered in his previous relationships, many of which have made his life considerably less easy (and, yes, perhaps sometimes that was part of the appeal, subconsciously at least – the danger, the challenge). But he’s always thought the heart wants what it wants, and you can’t argue yourself out of loving someone because it’s difficult. So no, he can’t provide whatever proof she’s looking for, can’t promise the same degree of consistency and security as her husband of over a decade. Looking back, though, he doesn’t think consistency and security are what attracted Ana to him in the beginning anyway. She seemed to be looking for something else, something different. Excitement, desire, adventure, love.

He can remember their first kiss vividly. She was the one to kiss him, an impulsive, reckless embrace anyone could have walked in on. There are some things very few people realise about the elegant, gracious Ana de Bourbon, and that day, he found out one of them – she’s every bit as impulsive as he is. He’d already realised she was just as passionate, just as romantic, and sometimes, just as flirtatious. It’s all gotten a lot more serious since then, though – for him, it’s gone from a spur of the moment infatuation with a beautiful woman to real and lasting emotion, to love. Despite what she seems to think, he doesn’t love an idea of her, at least certainly not anymore. Given her reaction to the nasty little titbits Rochefort told Ana about him and Adele, though, he’s starting to wonder if she perhaps only loved an idea of him, and if that idea is now somewhat tarnished by his past actions.

“I need to think about this,” she says, oblivious to his thoughts, head turning to gaze blindly out the window. “I can’t believe he would… I can’t believe… and yet, I do. It explains a lot, doesn’t it?”

“There’s one other thing,” Aramis says. “We have a plan to bring him down, but we might need -”

“Of course I’ll help.”

“Please, hear me out first. It could be dangerous.”

“Of course I’ll help,” she says fiercely, looking at him again. “It doesn’t matter if it’s dangerous. I’m not… I don’t need protecting, Aramis. I’m not Lois Lane, I’m not some damsel in distress.”

“I never said you were,” he says, completely confused by this wild tangent. Lately it feels like they’re talking at cross purposes all the time – it worries him. “I also never said I wanted you to be.” 

Of course he wants to protect her – he wants to protect everyone he loves. God knows he’s put a lot of work into trying to protect Porthos, Athos, and even Treville over the years, and then last year he added d’Artagnan and Constance to the list as well. Perhaps Milady is even there now, after everything, although he’s not stupid enough to ever say that. The point is that wanting to protect someone and recognising their ability to protect themselves are not mutually exclusive ideas. He’s willing to let the people he cares about takes risks, provided they’re willing to let him be there to help when they do.

“Right.” The annoyed flush in her cheeks fade. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

“I just think you need to hear the plan first, before you agree to anything,” Aramis says. “Trust me on this. We’re still… working on it. Consider it a draft.”

“So much hedging can’t be a good sign,” Ana notes, but she leans forward slightly and nods for him to start explaining.

X_X_X_X

On the way out, Porthos stops by her and quirks an eyebrow at Milady. Aramis and d’Artagnan have already left, Aramis to speak to Ana as covertly as he can, and d’Artagnan to spend some time with his fiancée before she dumps him and heads off on the honeymoon solo.

“Your car will be parked outside your place by tomorrow night,” she says to him. And then, on impulse, surprising herself, she hugs him. It’s clumsy, and awkward, and he’s too tall and broad, and she would be done with it in a moment except after the first second’s surprise he hugs her back and holds her there for longer. He’s surprisingly warm and good at hugs – a human teddy bear, she thinks wryly, although it’s not as if she’s ever owned a teddy bear so it’s not like she’d know. Finally, she manages to extricate herself, flushing and glaring at him as if he’s crossed a line even though she’s the one who hugged him.

Athos is watching them, eyebrows raised, visibly surprised. She can understand the feeling.

“You did… well,” she says shortly to Porthos, stepping back even further and crossing her arms.

He grins at her, unscathed. “You’re welcome. Told you we’re friends now.”

“I’m a very bad friend to have,” she says sharply.

“S’alright. I’m a great one, love.” He winks at her, deliberately mugging for Athos now, and she feels her lips curving despite herself. “And if you ever want a more interesting favour and you’re looking for someone a bit less moody to help with it…”

“Porthos,” Athos says. “Keep talking and next time I’m bringing _two_ guns.”

It’s gallows humour, but at this point, that seems like the best variety they have.

She lets him make sardonic jokes and avoid the subject until they’re back at his place. He seems like he needs it. But once they’re there, she looks at him in silence for a long moment, and any attempt at insouciance drops away and he looks back at her, exhausted and defensive.

Her voice comes out distant, like someone else is speaking. “What were you going to do, Athos? Kill Thomas?”

“Probably not?” he says, but it comes out a question. He sighs when she just looks at him in response. “I don’t know. He ruined our lives. Don’t you want him -”

“To pay? Of course. Believe it or not, I’ve taken my own steps to that end.” Her voice is dry, now. She stands well back from him, because a part of her wants to shake him and yell at him. “But you’re letting us both off the hook, Athos, if you think he’s the one who ruined our lives. You said yourself that me not trusting you was an issue right from the start. It was. I lied. That’s on me. And it was never Thomas’s hands around my throat.”

He visibly flinches.

“Anger’s so much easier than anything else, isn’t it?” she notes. “You can lash out with it, expel it – no, don’t give me that look. That comment wasn’t meant to target you. I do it too, but with words, and the occasional slap. Anger’s so _comforting_.”

“I don’t think either of us have a problem managing guilt, either, to tell the truth.”

“Hmm. You’re right, I suppose. Though I like to think I hide mine a bit better.”

“You hide _everything_ better than I do.”

It’s amazing, she thinks, that they can say these things to each other, and it doesn’t feel like they’re throwing grenades for once. It’s just… them, the worst of them, laid out in these simple, cold, bleak little sentences, some of which could almost sound like jokes if you didn’t know the history. She sighs. “I didn’t think you’d believe me if I told you. He was your younger brother. You always seemed to adore him.”

“I think that was half overcompensation.” He sounds a little choked as he admits something she always knew, but never wanted to say – back then she was unwilling to dig too deeply into his deepest hopes and fears and insecurities, not because she didn’t want to hear about them, but because she was always uneasily conscious of how incredibly unfair it would be to prompt him to that when she refused to admit to any of hers. “I resented him so much. Everyone loved him -”

“Right.” She rolls her eyes before she can stop herself. “Everyone liked Thomas better, everyone thought I was too good for you, no one could ever want you, Athos! I get it. Your parents fucked you up. I hear parents do that. But here’s the facts – you are a hundred times the man your brother is, no one for a second thought I was too good for you, and I wanted you more than I ever wanted anything else. Being a bit fucked up doesn’t make you worthless or a lost cause, any more than doing one terrible thing means your life is completely over.”

“As if I’m the only one in this room letting their old issues rule their life,” Athos says, and his voice is so gentle it dulls the sting a little. “What was it Sarazin said? If anyone saw who you are, they couldn’t love you?” She tries to turn away, but he catches her wrist in her hand. His grip is so light that she could break it in a second, but as always his touch burns and comforts her all at once and she lets him draw her closer instead. “Because I disagree.”

She doesn’t know how to respond to this, knowing a flat negative will be ignored, so she just swallows hard.

“In fact, I think you’ve got it the wrong way around. No one could see who you are and _not_ love you.” He looks at her with almost unbearable sadness. “You’re incredible. You’re the strongest person I know. I could always see that, even if I didn’t know all the details. I don’t want to be angry with you anymore.”

They stand there, his hand loosely circling her wrist, for a very long time, and then she clears her throat. “They say anger is only pain turned inside-out, don’t they?”

“I thought it was that anger was fear turned inwards, or something like that.”

“I’m sure we’ve got plenty of both.”

“I’m sorry. For what happened five years ago. I’m more sorry than you can possibly imagine.”

She stares at him for a moment, stunned. She feels almost like he slapped her in the face with it. “What?”

“It sounds so stupid, doesn’t it?” He gives a little cracked laugh. “You apologise to someone when you rear end their car or walk into them in the street or take the last donut. Not when you nearly choke them to death.”

“No. Although I don’t think Hallmark makes a ‘sorry for sleeping with your brother’ card, either.”

“Being raped by my brother,” he corrects painfully, and the word makes her wince as it always does.

“You know it’s not that simple.”

“What did you do to him?” he asks abruptly. “You said you’d taken steps.”

She can’t look at him directly. Instead, she stares at the wall, picking up his expression from the corner of her eye instead. “Not personally, or well, not entirely by myself. It was my idea, but Armand’s the one who gave me the resources I needed to find out everything Thomas was trying to hide. His office was the first place I went when I got to the city.”

She’d walked in and played him the recording she had of his client gloating about rape by extortion. He hadn’t been horrified by it, but he _had_ been interested by her methods of getting it. Her willingness to immediately stoop to manipulation, blackmail, and sex to deal with Thomas had impressed him almost as much as the criminal history that counted as her resumé.

“The first place? How -” He cuts himself off with a sigh of realisation. “The evidence. Thomas got the evidence on you from Richelieu. And you found that out and went to try and deal with it before news of you reached Sarazin.”

“Something like that,” she admits. “Anyway, I ended up signing a five year contract in return for excellent wages and the assurance that Thomas would never, ever make it as a politician. If he tries, the whole world will know _everything_ Thomas d’Athos has done, all his dirty little secrets we were able to uncover.”

She thinks Richelieu thought of it as a trial period, seeing what she’d do with unlimited money, contacts and resources. She considered releasing all the information on Thomas instead of just threatening him, for the karmic aspect to it, but men who don’t have anything left get an odd kind of freedom. Whereas someone clinging desperately to the shreds of their life and knowing even that could be taken away at someone else’s whim – well, that’s much better. Armand approved of that as well.

Athos is still staring at her, so she shrugs. “His punishment is that he gets to spend the rest of his empty little life in Pinon as a small town lawyer with a nasty wife.”

“And Catherine gets to be married to a sociopath for the rest of her life and have no idea?”

“Oh, she knows perfectly well, I emailed her the recording of what Thomas said to me years ago.” She feels a surge of pity at his expression and softens her tone. “Catherine decides her own reality. She always has. She hated me, and she wanted it to be my fault.”

He swallows hard. “So did I.” There’s a long pause, and then he asks, a little awkwardly, “Why did she always hate you so much? Even before that.”

“Why – oh.” She almost smiles, despite the conversation they’re in. “Catherine used to think the two of you were meant to be, that one day you’d look at her and realise that what you wanted was right beside you all along. When you didn’t, she moved on to Thomas, but I think she told herself that it was because you just weren’t really interested in romance. Then you met me and proved otherwise.” Catherine’s never been known for her subtlety – it hadn’t taken Milady long to work out where all the animosity was coming from.

He blinks, looking nonplussed. “I would never have – I mean, she wasn’t – it was only ever you for me. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved,” he finishes fiercely. Then his expression dims again, as he says, “Of course, I suppose it might have been better for you if that weren’t the case.”

He doesn’t apologise again, though, which is something of a relief. But she knows what she has to say now. It’d be easier if she was drunk, though. She hates emotional honesty.

“No,” she says, swallowing hard. “It wouldn’t have been. But maybe it would have been better for you.”

“Anne…”

“I should never have lied to you, not when I used you to get into Rochefort’s house, and not when he came to see me again,” she says. “It’s just I’m used to doing everything by myself, and for myself, because for so long that was the only option I had. I suppose that means I have trust issues. I’m sorry I managed to give you them as well.”

He just looks at her and doesn’t say anything, and she thinks he knows she’s gearing herself up for the next sentence.

“And… about five years ago… six years ago… I’m sorry about that, too. You were right.” The words hurt. “I shouldn’t have lied to you just because I wanted to pretend the past didn’t exist. I loved you, but I was selfish, I thought I could have everything and never have to deal with anything. I had so much going on and you didn’t know any of it. It was always going to fall apart somehow, and that’s my fault. I’m sorry I got you involved.”

“I’m not,” he says unexpectedly. “I’m glad you did. I would never trade what we had for anything.”

“Me neither,” she admits. She collapses down onto the couch and with a deep sigh he sits next to her, both of them sprawling in exhaustion. She leans her head on his shoulder, surprised she still can, that it feels so natural to do so. “How it ended, though. I wish I could change that. Go back five years and make different choices.” 

Or maybe just that she could be a different person. She wishes that a lot, too. With who she is, where she comes from, the things she’s done… perhaps they were always doomed. Perhaps it never mattered what she did once she met him, only what she did before – and now, what she’s done since. 

“Yes. That. Exactly that.” He presses his lips to the top of her head and just rests there, unmoving, giving a faint sigh. When he speaks, the words are muffled by her hair. “So where do we go from here?”

“I go to England, I suppose.” The idea seems even emptier and awfuller than it did before. She waits a moment in case he’ll say _don’t_ , but of course he doesn’t, because somehow he’s become the sensible one of the two of them. “After we finish this, anyway. You have your job, your friends, your purpose…”

“And you go off and find a new life, and a new career, and someone better than me.” It sounds like it hurts him to say, but at this point in the conversation, what’s one more blow?

She won’t find someone, anyway. Because six and a half years ago this man crashed into her in an office, and made her shiver when they shook hands, and said _Anne_ with so much wonder she wanted to keep it as her name forever, and got a look on his face whenever he made her laugh that was nothing short of thrilled, and wanted to know her thoughts on absolutely everything, and loved her with an impossible and incredible passion. She found him, and he was _right_ , and the memory of him will always trump the reality of anyone else.

But that’s okay. She can live with that. She hates even using the phrase ‘true love’, but undoubtedly, that’s what she got. Maybe it only lasted a year and a half, but that’s a year and a half more than most people get, and it’s not like she deserved it to begin with. Maybe it ended badly, but again, what did she expect?

“Well,” she says, voice a little unsteady with emotion. “Got any other questions?”

He pauses, then asks, “What’s your real name?”

“My birth name was Charlotte Branwell, I think,” she tells him. “I’ve had a lot of others since, though. I was renamed by my foster family when I was three to Anne de la Chapelle, then at seven I think I became… let me see…”

“Maybe I should have asked, what name do you use when you think of yourself?”

She frowns; he’s making this question much harder than it started out as. “I don’t have one, really. Whatever name I’m going by at the time, I suppose.” She mentally attaches certain personalities to the names, sometimes, but they’re not really alternate identities. All of them are her. It’s more like someone reinventing themselves with a new nickname than it is a series of complete and distinct personalities, although the divide between Anne de Breuil (the name she chose when she was trying to be the best she could be and leave her past sins behind) and Milady de Winter (the name adopted when she was blind with rage and pain and wanted to strike out at the world) is certainly the clearest.

“Oh,” he says very quietly, and she wonders if he wanted her to say Anne.

She clears her throat, and almost manages a smile. “How about any other past sins you’d like to throw in my face? Now would be the time.”

“Hmm. Let me think.” She can feel his crooked half-smile against her hair, as well as hearing it in his voice. “I have one. It’s definitely your fault that I had to leave the table for Never Have I Ever at d’Artagnan’s bachelor party.”

“Oh, please. It’s hardly my fault you’re repressed.” She rolls her eyes, but she finds she’s smiling again as well, even if it’s bittersweet.

At least they have here and now, and when she leaves, she won’t leave him hating her. Maybe instead of a yearly Christmas call to Thomas he can make one to her – it’ll give her a reason to both look forward to the holiday season and to dread it, which from her limited understanding seems to be pretty much how normal people with families feel about Christmas. Although when she tries to picture it, she can’t imagine speaking to him over the phone. Generally, the only times they’ve called each other have been immediately followed by one of them rushing to wherever the other one is, because phone sex just isn’t an adequate substitute for the real thing. And listening to him speak absolutely does it for her. Especially when his voice drops low and gets that slight husky edge to it…

“It’s not about being repressed,” he says, which is almost definitely a lie. “I would have lost the game, thanks to you.”

“No, you would’ve gotten drunk and been allowed to brag about the many varieties of wild sex you’ve had. I’d consider that winning the game, or at least winning at life.”

She could kick herself the second she says it, because honestly, it’s not like either of them are winning at life. He’s an alcoholic, close to getting an official reprimand from his place of work, unhappily single, on terrible terms with all his surviving family, and currently recovering from a bullet wound. She’s an unemployed former criminal, with serious issues, a history of compulsive lying, no friends or family to speak of, a dead boss, and unresolved romantic feelings that she’s apparently never going to move on from no matter how many of these therapeutic talks they have.

“Maybe you’re right,” he says, surprising her, his voice dropping lower until she feels the rumble of it up her spine, and she exhales a little shakily at the sound. His hand finds hers, thumb brushing against her knuckles lightly until she opens her hand to slot her fingers between his. “I’m just so used to winning drinking games, though. Did the others ever tell you about the time we all went out to celebrate Treville’s promotion, and…”

She’s only half-listening as he tells the story, busy leaning her head against his shoulder and looking down at their joined hands. They fit together perfectly.

Okay, so they’re not doing that great in the ‘winning at life’ sense. But right now, they both do have someone willing to curl up on a couch so closely that they’re touching nearly everywhere, and talk about nothing at all just to keep hearing the other’s voice, and wind their fingers together and cling like they’re holding on for dear life. Not to mention someone willing to kill and die for them. After everything, after all they’ve done to each other, that’s still here. They’re still here.

She supposes that it could be worse.


	19. Honest to Goodness

“We’ve been over this,” Rochefort says coldly, eyeing her in that superior, disgusted way that’s so unique to him. “Do you want me to tell your detective everything you’ve been up to? After all, now it includes getting him shot. That seems like a lot for a man to overlook.”

“I nearly died saving his life, and they all know it,” she says, giving him a viciously triumphant smile. “He’s so infatuated with me right now that you could hand him word-for-word transcripts of these little meetings and he wouldn’t believe you for a moment. Any influence you had over me is gone.”

“There’s the little matter of the evidence from Sarazin.”

She lets the smile die a little bit. “You said that the evidence died with Sarazin. Without him to testify against me…”

“No, I said I’d deal with your Sarazin problem.” As her smile disappears completely, his returns, as oily as ever. “And I did. But I’m not a short-sighted man. I took the opportunity to get some insurance, just in case.”

“Really?” She does her best to look like a scared person putting on an unconvincing mask of bravado. Which makes her, in reality, a somewhat damaged and insecure person pretending to be a confident person pretending to be a scared person pretending to be confident again. At this rate even she’ll get confused. “I don’t believe you. Prove it.”

“That incident with that young girl with the facial scars,” he says, all but smacking his lips. His confidence is quite real, but beneath the sheen of smugness in his gaze there’s too much watchfulness. He’s trying to gauge if she believes him, if she’ll cave, if his bluff will work. “Celine, wasn’t it?”

That’s when she knows, absolutely, that there’s no more evidence on her. The incident he’s referring to wouldn’t be the first one anyone would pull from the pile of her crimes – if he truly had more evidence on her, it would probably be what happened with Gus and the LeMaitre brothers, or one of her earliest encounters with Gallagher back when they were both less cautious individuals. She knew there could be proof of those things. But Celine is a memorable part of Sarazin’s history, not hers – she had nothing to do with what happened to her. Rochefort’s just pulling something from what he knows about Sarazin in the hopes she was peripherally involved and still carries the guilt. There’s no proof of her doing anything to Celine, because she _didn’t_ do anything to that little girl. If Rochefort knew her age (it occurs to her with a start that no one, not even Athos, actually knows her age, that she herself might need a notebook and an hour’s thought to work it out for sure) he’d know she was underage then as well – not by much, of course, but it’d make it damn hard to charge her even if she had been involved, especially given how long ago it was.

He has _nothing_. Her past is _gone_. Everything that anyone could find out about her, the police already know. And what they know is… well, it’s bad, but it’s mostly a list of the thefts she did for Sarazin. The file on her he gave Rochefort didn’t contain proof of worse things she’d done when she worked for him, because that would implicate him as well. And it didn’t contain anything after she was twenty, because by then she’d left Sarazin. Rochefort seems to have a sketchy idea of what she’s done since, but that’s all. And if that’s all he can find out, that’s all anyone can find out.

The worst bits of her past, the memories that keep her up in the night, the actions that would make even this new, harder Athos look at her with absolute disgust, despite what he thinks… no one knows those. Armand did, but he’s dead now. She can finally put it all behind her, for good. All of the crimes she can be convicted for are going to be legally forgiven by the DA’s office if they get Rochefort. All the rest… well, those regrets will never leave her, but they’ll never be used against her either. She’s wanted to escape her past for so long, become someone new, and now she _can_.

The realisation is freeing, but she doesn’t let it show on her face. Instead, she inhales sharply and bites her lip for the barest moment, before deliberately setting her face into an expression of insouciance. “Someone took a picture of that? How uncouth.”

“But also persuasive, I assume.”

She leans forward, lets some of her rage show in her eyes. She _hates_ being blackmailed, and he’s seen that absolute fury from her before, so it won’t surprise him. Then she moves even further forward, so she’s all but straddling him, her lips next to his ear. Since Rochefort is someone who tries to intimidate people by getting too close, hopefully it won’t seem odd to him that she’s doing the same. And there it is, hard in her hand as she picks his pocket – a spare one of those little gadgets he uses to destroy technology, thankfully, not him enjoying the straddling, because _ugh_. He’ll realise it’s missing, of course, and realise she took it, but hopefully he won’t realise why or what she’s done with it.

“You won’t have a hold over me forever, you know,” she says now, to distract him, as threatening as she is intimidatingly close. “There isn’t a safe in the world I can’t get into eventually. It would be a mistake to underestimate me.”

He smirks, underestimating her. He shoves her off him and she nearly falls but catches herself before she can. “But ‘eventually’ is not ‘now’. For now, you’ll do what I say. Sestini gets into town tomorrow. By now they’ll have found the account that leads to him. All I need you to do is convince them to take Sestini in, assuming they’re not convinced already.”

“What do you want me to do, tell them I heard Sestini threaten to kill him? And what’s my excuse for not mentioning that from the beginning?” She shifts back into her seat, still glaring at him balefully.

“Because you were all so focused on me, until you found the account, that it didn’t occur to you to consider other suspects. Honest mistake.”

“Well, I am known for my honesty,” she quips dryly. Sestini never threatened Richelieu in her hearing, but now that she thinks about it, it doesn’t seem out of character for him. He’s been sending vicious letters and emails for years, and their phone calls had always ended with Armand hanging up midway through the other man’s sentence with an expressive roll of his eyes. It would be a half-decent plan, if she was actually on his side.

She walks for three blocks, and then there’s Athos’s car – a taxi would be less risky, but he wanted to be close by, and now that he’s finally back in action (at least, to a degree) it’s impossible to persuade him to stay home. He’s gotten even more overprotective since the plan involves so much more risk for her than anyone else – well, except maybe Ana de Bourbon.

She opens the passenger door and swings her way in, enjoying the way his once-over to assess her for visible injury turns into something else by the time it reaches her legs, which are shown off spectacularly in the trim, abbreviated business skirt and her trademark sharp high heels. Today she’s not wearing her other trademark, though – this morning she looked at her chokers, looked at her scarves, and didn’t feel the urge to wrap either around her neck. Her scar is visible.

“I can’t tell you glad I am you’re letting me drive again.” The corner of Athos’s mouth twists up into that surprisingly wicked smirk her gives on rare occasions, and his gaze slides from her to the road. “Amongst other things.”

She feels a ripple of heat go through her at his words and at the memory of last night, but manages to keep up her expression of light amusement somehow. “Well, there’s only so long you can listen to a grown man beg.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever hit your limit on that one before,” he murmurs, resting one hand on her leg, thumb stroking lightly at her skin and giving her goosebumps. “I certainly don’t think _I’ll_ ever get bored of the reverse.”

“I suppose there had to be some new thresholds for us to cross, even now.” She feels the desire throbbing through her ebb slightly as she thinks about when now is, and the words come out without her really meaning to say them, “You realise this time tomorrow, this will all be over, one way or another.”

If their attempt to corner Rochefort doesn’t work, then they have nothing, and any chance of successfully getting him to confess will have completely disappeared.

She’s booked a flight to England for the day after tomorrow in case they succeed. She hasn’t planned for if they don’t, and she doesn’t know if that’s denial, or if when it comes right down to it she’ll actually stay in the country and deal with the consequences. She hasn’t told Athos about the flight yet. She knows he won’t be happy, but his unhappiness is survivable, if painful – what she’s dreading is seeing that tiny little edge of relief she thinks he’ll feel, that he’s finally free of her and this tangled mess they’ve become now.

“Yes,” Athos says, and a shadow passes across his face. Suddenly, he takes his hand off her leg – she misses the feel of it immediately – and jerks the wheel sharply to the side, into a parking lot, and finds a space. They’re not in a busy area so it’s all but abandoned. Then he leans over, takes her face in his hands, and kisses her, desire and regret wound together to make the taste of it bittersweet. “But we do have today.”

She surges against him, kissing him back just as passionately, fingers tangling in his hair. To her surprise, his hands slide to her hips and he lifts her, dragging her across and into his lap, pulling the chair back and down so they have more space. She squirms to try and find a way to sit that gives her purchase, but there’s no space on this narrow seat to straddle him properly. She shifts to sit facing the wheel, but that angle doesn’t achieve what she was aiming for either – in fact, it means her whole weight is on him and his recent gunshot wound, instead of just most of it. Still, he seems to like the feel of it, judging by the way his breathing picks up. He reaches around, the firmness of his chest against her back, muscled arms wound around her waist so she’s trapped in that position, and with one hand he drags her skirt up teasingly, blunt fingernails scraping her upper thigh. His other hand moves up inside her blouse and starts to climb, leaving a trail of heat.

“Not like this,” she says, and then a thumb finds her nipple and she groans and arches into the steady, knowing pressure of it. “Backseat.”

“Why?” He sets his teeth to the tendon on her neck. “And if I hear the words ‘bullet wound’…”

This is a terrible position for a recently-injured person, she thinks, although her train of thought is slightly distracted by his clever hands and she rocks a little against him without meaning to. Fuck, she can’t take any of her own weight from this position, can’t do anything besides hold onto the space just below the window for dear life, and he’ll have to put in basically all the effort, thrusting up into her from below. She tries to come up with another reason for them to move into the backseat, suppressing a whimper as his hot mouth lands on the hinge of her jaw just as he starts playing with the lace edging on her panties, and can’t think of one. It takes her a few minutes, during which time it becomes impossible for her to keep quiet as he toys with her. Her blouse is completely open by now, her skirt rucked up to her waist, and her head leaning back on his shoulder as she writhes.

“I can’t come in this position,” she gasps weakly, which has to be the most blatant lie she’s ever told him, especially given he can feel exactly how wet she already is right now.

He gives a huff of amusement. “Oh, really. Well, I’d like to test that claim.”

This is when she should say _no, get in the fucking backseat_ but unfortunately one finger is hooking into the waistband of her panties and her mind whites out and she jerks up against him with a little moan instead. She tries to think, she _tries_ , but the next minute is too full of desperate writhing, surging, twisting, and raw, raspy whimpers to form any thoughts at all. He begins his little experiment as ruthlessly as he intends to continue, two fingers alternating on her clit at just the right pressure, mouth sucking at the curve where her neck meets her shoulder, his other hand kneading and stroking and toying with her breasts until her nipples are so tight they ache. 

“How do you think it’s going?” he asks conversationally, pinching her clit between finger and thumb just hard enough to make her half-shriek and thrash against him, blood surging, nearly coming just from the shock of it. With his other hand, he almost casually tweaks one stiff nipple, thrumming it so that pleasure spirals downwards, spiking and spreading, and she gasps, pulse thready and breathing ragged and too quick. “Would you like to retract your previous statement? Because I think you’re about to come all over my fingers.”

Despite the overwhelming lust racing through her body, competitiveness rises in her at the arrogant certainty in his tone. “Do your worst,” she hisses, turning her head just enough to try and snap at him, although he easily avoids her by leaning back a little, and licks a hot path up her neck in retaliation for the attempt. His hands move to her hips and she manages to lift herself up a little so he can pull her panties down her legs to give him more access, even though she knows she’s only making it easier for him to win this little challenge. Of course, they say it’s not about winning, and when the game’s this enjoyable, she can see why.

“My pleasure,” he murmurs, and then he stops taking it easy on her and his hands are everywhere. The heat builds, and _builds_ , and it’s unbearable. She’s unable to stop herself responding, arching her breasts into his hands so he’ll grope them more firmly, pushing against his fingers to make him stroke her clit more roughly, grinding down against the evidence of his arousal she can feel stiff against her ass, trying to lean her head backwards so she can nip at the hinge of his jaw, at his neck, at his lips, at anything at all. She’s desperate for his touch, for him. She tries to hold back her moans, but that’s just as impossible as anything else and they spill out of her, breathless little cries, high-pitched whimpers of pleasure, desperate choked pleas, animal noises of pure need, and she can feel his wordless satisfaction at every one of them, the bastard. But then she can feel herself cresting, approaching the edge, the brink, and she sinks her teeth into her lower lip to the point of nearly drawing blood and squeezes her eyes shut tightly and _fights_ it, fights it with everything she has because she’s at least going to make this difficult for him, and she feels his soft chuckle huffing against her neck and it only makes it harder not to let the pleasure overwhelm her.

“I can feel the way you’re shaking with need, how desperate you are,” he observes, still with that air of smugness, but his voice is deep and throaty with lust. “God, it’s making me so fucking hard, the way you’re riding my fingers, the way you’d do anything for just a bit more pressure.” He illustrates this with one hard, perfect stroke _right_ where she needs it and she wails, wordless and surrendering already, mouth falling open and head falling back. “You’re so wet. Forget about making you come, I could make you _beg_ , couldn’t I?”

He twists his fingers against her wetness, playing her ruthlessly and perfectly, and she shatters with a cry that fills the small, enclosed space of the car, jerking and twitching against him. It’s a wild and disorientating orgasm, all little sharp jolts of ecstasy, her breath leaving her in pants, nothing in the world but the pleasure slamming through her over and over again and his fingers hard and clever against her and his rough, low voice in her ear pushing her higher.

“Well,” she says finally, when everything’s died down a little and she can hear things besides the rush in her ears and see more than the inside of her own eyelids, although her heart’s still pounding, and his fingers are still making her throb. Her voice comes out croaky. “I think you may have won that one.”

He twists his fingers again apparently just to hear her breath catch and her body move against him helplessly once more. Helpless, that’s the word – whenever he touches her, she just _reacts_ , she can’t stop it, she’s never been able to suppress that instinctive _need_ for him. “It’s always good to hear confirmation.” 

She shifts forward slightly in his lap, leaning forward a little to give him the chance to free himself from his pants. “Now that I’ve conceded, what _would_ you like the forfeit to be?” Somewhere, distantly, she’s aware that whatever concern she had earlier – what was it again? Thinking’s very hard right now – should still be a concern, and also they’re in public, and she’s semi-naked, and it’s the middle of the day, but God, she’s desperate to be filled again, to be _full_ , to have him _inside_ her. She nearly whines just at the thought of it.

He lets out a matching groan, and then there’s the noise of his zip, and he noses and lips his way along the back of her neck, and he retrieves his wet hand from between her legs and rests it on her hip instead. 

“Do you want -” she starts to say, twisting round to look at him. She hasn’t even had the chance to really _kiss_ him apart from in that first moment, at this angle she hasn’t been able to touch him or tease him (hasn’t been able to do much but cling to parts of the car and try not to lose her mind), it’s all been him touching her. She feels vaguely deprived by that, but more to the point, he could probably use some attention. He catches her meaning and smirks at her.

“You just spent ten minutes grinding against me and whimpering, do you really think at this point I need any more foreplay than that?” He suits actions to words and pulls her back with both hands on her hips, angling her against him, and then slowly lowers her onto his hot, slick cock, inch by slow inch until she’s almost unbearably full, the push of and burn and stretch of him inside her the most amazing feeling in the world. She can only rock against him slightly using her hand on the inside handle as leverage, and mostly it’s him holding her hips and working her against him, thrusting up deep inside her repeatedly in a hard, desperate rhythm that catches her blood on fire again, lifting her and impaling her on his cock in time with those thrusts. “Touch yourself,” he orders her, panting breath against her ear, and she obeys with a groan, reaching between her legs with her free hand as he moves thick and relentless inside her, hitting the spot that makes her wild.

It doesn’t take long to come again, half bent over the wheel, what with the push and drag of his hot, hard flesh inside of her, his hands controlling both her body and the pace, her own fingers pressing frantically just above where their bodies join. She’s panting uncontrollably, she’s sweaty, wrecked, moaning, needy, and when he starts to jerk and thrust up uncontrollably, muffling his moans against her shoulder, she clenches and spasms around him, rests her forehead against the wheel, and lets herself fall into the mad, hot pleasure of it all. This orgasm’s longer than the last one, more drawn out but also deeper, somehow, because he’s in her and surrounding her and _with_ her, not just playing her like a piano.

It takes her a long time to steady her breathing, to come back to the real world, to pry open her eyes again.

“If you had managed to reopen that fucking wound just then,” she says eventually, leaning back against him with a groan, and enjoying how he wraps his arms around her from behind and steadies her. Her hair’s ruined, and so are their clothes, and they’re covered in sweat and come, and Athos probably shouldn’t give anyone lifts in this car for a while since it smells very obviously of sex, but she can’t bring herself to regret a moment of it. “I would’ve let you bleed to death.”

“No,” he says, and drops a kiss on her neck. “You wouldn’t have.”

She frowns at the ceiling of the car, not quite sure where the vague sense of wrongness is coming from as he kisses her – then she understands. She reaches back, twisting her arm get her fingers entangled in his hair, and pulls his head slightly forward and down, so that his lips aren’t just at a random part of her neck anymore, they’re directly on her old scar. There’s a brief pause, and then he kisses it, so softly that she might not feel it at all if it weren’t for the reverberations that go through her entire body. It’s like every part of her relaxes at once, muscles she never even realised were tense finally untensing.

This is what she’s been missing, all these years. Him. She trusts him. She wants him. She loves him.

She’s so screwed.

X_X_X_X

“You don’t have to do this,” Aramis says for what must be the fifth – sixth? – time.

Ana doesn’t roll her eyes, but the smile she gives him has an edge of exasperation to it. “If you’re right, Rochefort has been stalking me for over a _decade_ , and is responsible for the deaths of several of my friends and acquaintances. Richelieu, Alvarez, _Marguerite_. And you say he wants to kill the father of my son as well. I’m not here to help you, Aramis, or because I’m too polite to say no. If all that’s true, I want him to _fry_.”

“If you keep this up, I may even start to like you,” Milady drawls, entering the room unexpectedly.

Ana narrows her eyes at Milady. “I can’t tell if that’s an overture or a threat.”

“I like to combine the two. Adds spice.”

Aramis focuses on Ana. “So you really believe me – us? About Rochefort?”

“If you’re wrong, this plan will do nothing,” she says, eminently reasonable. “We don’t lose anything by trying.”

“Well, I might get shot,” Milady says. “But I can understand why you’d consider that acceptable losses. The house is set, by the way.” She carefully places a number of thin metal lockpicks back in a tiny case. She gives it a satisfied pat when she’s done, slipping it back down the side of her spiky knee-high boots.

“No one saw you?”

She snorts. “Oh, _please_. I was in and out, and Madame de Bourbon handled most of it anyway.” The comment apparently reminding her, Ana passes over the little device Milady stole from Rochefort, and Milady stows it in her bag with a little smile. It’s been used and is now nothing more than a hunk of black plastic, but you can’t tell just by looking.

“I know,” Aramis mutters. “I nearly got beaten up by those guards she set on us. Athos had to threaten to arrest them before they let up. But that did let us keep them there and give them a lecture about respecting policemen, so I like to think we helped, in our little way.”

Milady continues, ignoring him. “Next sweep is in a few hours, though, and they’ll notice it then, so we should get this show on the road.” She turns to Ana. “Now, remember, don’t overdo it.”

“Actually, she probably can overdo it.” Aramis has considered this one. “I mean, Rochefort clearly has a couple of screws loose and on some level still thinks she’s twelve. She can sound as scared and weak as she likes.” That seems absurd to him, though – he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Ana scared or weak. Uncertain, maybe, but that’s about it.

“The others?” Milady asks.

“Still following him. Right now he’s enjoying smirking smugly at us and waving too much to file a complaint, but it’s only a matter of time, _especially_ after earlier. I’ll go join them now.” Aramis tries to smile, but it’s beyond him right now. After a brief moment, he pulls Ana in, and kisses her forehead. “Be careful.”

“Your concern is noted.” Milady cheerfully holds out her hand. “Gun, please. Athos said he gave it to you.”

Aramis sighs and hands it over to her. “Unloaded,” he reassures Ana, reaching down to rest his hand on his own gun, unconsciously looking for comfort. They’ve used weirder plans, and by Milady’s standards, this is positively simple, but he still doesn’t like it. “I’ll head out the back way.”

“Let’s go then,” Milady says, still obnoxiously cheerful, and jams the gun into Ana’s back. “You’re now officially my hostage.”

X_X_X_X

Ana has never liked Milady de Winter much, even before the other woman started sleeping with her husband. She met her once or twice prior to that – efficiently shadowing Richelieu, wearing short dresses and a Cheshire cat kind of grin, the sort of smile that said _I’m in on the joke_ or _I know the secret_. There was a kind of superiority to the look on her face. Ana often had the uncomfortable feeling that when Milady looked at her, she summed her up and dismissed her easily – as just the trophy wife of a billionaire, as just another socialite with a pretend job, as just the little woman standing behind her man. Milady acted like she knew things, had done things, had seen things that Ana could never comprehend, and that made her feel childish and useless and ignorant. And then the woman had so easily seduced her husband, becoming the sexy, daring mistress instead of the boring, frigid wife Ana sometimes worried she was.

It’s probably ironic that this is the closest she’s come to liking the other woman, and it’s not when she’s helping to save Louis’s company from the latest disaster, it’s when she’s in the middle of making a phone call to one of Ana’s closest friends demanding a ransom for her.

What little Ana’s done so far has been unnerving enough – visiting Rochefort and undoing all the bars on a door so Milady could get in easily. Distracting Rochefort’s guards from their patrols by claiming that she thought she saw Aramis’s car out front, that she was scared and needed all of them to check up and down the street. Setting off that strange little device. She’s not made for lying, concealing, game-playing – well, unless you count her semi-affair with Aramis. In most cases, it’s just not her style. And this is next level.

Ana leans to the side, wanting to glance out the window and make sure the man’s managed to follow them the whole way here. The man who apparently has a full-time job following her around with a phone and taking pictures. Now she’s noticed him, of course, he looks vaguely familiar, he must have been around all the time – but she’d thought nothing of it before now. She sees a lot of people during the course of a day.

Milady’s hand tightens on her arm, and when Ana looks up, she shakes her head meaningfully. Right. If the man realises he’s been made, this will look like what it is, a set up. He can’t realise that he was led here, that everything since she stepped out of her house with Milady close behind her, coat draped over her hand to cover up the gun she was pointing at Ana’s back, has been a charade.

“Hello, Rochefort,” Milady says brightly, over the phone. “Why, no, I haven’t done as you asked. Why? Because I don’t like people having information on me. I’ve decided it’s time to move to a more direct method than trying to rob you again. I’m about to give you a drop location, and you’ll leave the files there within an hour, or you’ll never see Madame de Bourbon alive again.” She waits as the voice on the other end erupts into absolute, crazed fury. “Mmhmm. Oh, yes, I figured out who all those long rants about the nature of love were about. Mmhmm. Yes, that _would_ be murder. Yes. I’ve made my peace with that. Would you like to hear proof of life?”

When she presses the phone against Ana’s ear, Ana feels abruptly stupid. What is she supposed to say in this situation? She isn’t an actor. “Rochefort?” she whimpers after a moment, and scrunches up her face, trying to force more emotion into her tone. It feels stupid as well, but after a moment, real tears spring to her eyes. She thought he was her _friend_. She’s had few of those she can trust – apparently, even fewer than she thought. “Rochefort, what’s g-going on? Milady just turned up, and she has a _gun_ , and she said she’d hurt my son if I didn’t come with her, She says you have something of hers so she took something of -” She breaks off as Milady pulls the phone away again, with an approving smile.

“I’ll text you where to leave those files,” she says brightly. “No, I don’t think you’ll go to the police. Because if you do, she’s dead. And after you’ve got her back? Well, believe it or not, I’m quite willing to hurt children. She’s already informed me she’s not willing to risk that. And if you risk that for her, and something happens to little Louis, I suspect she’d _never_ forgive you.”

She hangs up and smiles at Ana. “Poor man, he seems quite stressed.”

“Don’t you feel at all bad about this?” Ana asks curiously, unable to resist prodding at her.

“Explain?” Milady raises an eyebrow at her.

“If you’re right, and he’s a psychopath,” Ana says slowly, struggling for words, “Then caring about me may be the only really human thing about him. And we’re using that little bit of humanity to ruin his life.”

“Caring,” Milady says, as if tasting the word. “Is that the right word, do you think?”

The reflexive defence dies on her tongue – it was, Ana realises, just an automatic flare of concern for someone she’s thought of as a friend for so long. Maybe it was hearing his panic on the other end of the phone that pulled it the fore. But now she thinks, is it _caring_ that made him murder Marguerite? Or Richelieu? Or plan to kill Louis? She was only mildly fond of Marguerite, and she disliked Richelieu, and there’s no denying that her feelings about her husband are complex, but she never wanted any of them dead. And she’s used to being surrounded by people – noticing her, looking at her, taking photos – but there’s a difference between that and being _followed_.

And all those paintings in his house that creeped her out, and the way he’d sometimes smile at her and she’d think she was crazy for tensing, and the way he’d always talk down to her like she was still a twelve-year-old who needed to be humoured. The way he’d seem to sympathise with her but use that sympathy to guide her thoughts, the way he’d make her a little bit paranoid about other people in her life and what they might be after. He’s taken her quietly aside a hundred times to drop a word of warning in her ear – this person was flattering her to use her contacts in the company, that one was a reporter, that one wanted her to donate money. None of them genuinely wanted her friendship, he said. And according to him, Marguerite was trying to get a promotion, Aramis was a player who went from woman to woman, and Constance needed to make useful connections as part of her job. He’s been manipulating her for years, and she never realised, never knew. How many potential friends has she lost to his machinations? How many has she given up due to the seed of doubt he planted?

She’s known him since she was so _young_ , that’s the thing. As long as Louis. All up, she’s probably spent more time with him than with her busy parents, her distractible husband. How many parts of her personality did he try to mould? How many of her inner thoughts and fears are things he told her years ago? How did she not _know_ what he was and what he wanted?

“You’re right,” she says, a little choked up. “Thank God Aramis figured it out before Rochefort did any more damage. If he hadn’t been looking out for me…”

“Please stop before I throw up,” Milady’s voice is sharp. “If you’re going to make heart eyes and blather on about how amazing he is, I recommend waiting until Aramis is actually in the room. After all, you need to keep doling out those little bits of affection regularly if you’re going to keep him waiting around for you forever.”

Any little bit of liking that was building for Milady de Winter evaporates immediately. “It’s not like that. I love Aramis.” She can’t believe she’s justifying herself to her husband’s former mistress.

“From where I’m sitting, it looks more like you love having him on a string,” Milady comments snidely. “This is why I hate old money. You’re just so… entitled. Even when it comes to people. You have Aramis for passion, Louis for security… throw in Rochefort as well and you’re working up quite a collection.”

“How dare you! You have no idea about the bond between Aramis and I. And despite your intrusion into it, you have no idea about my marriage, either.”

“See, right there? That’s what I’m talking about. You still think you deserve your husband’s fidelity even after cheating on him.” Milady’s lip curls. “And you have the gall to judge me for that, as well.”

“You rubbed my face in it. You made it public so that everyone knew. You _enjoyed_ humiliating me.”

“Should we have hidden it instead, snuck around behind your back? Should Louis have lied about our relationship to you? You _do_ seem to think that’s the morally correct choice, after all, judging by your own actions.”

“And what _is_ the correct choice, then, in your view?” Ana snaps.

“Leave the man you don’t want,” Milady says slowly and condescendingly, as if talking to a small child. “Be with the one you do.”

“I have a son,” Ana says. “It’s not that simple.”

“Oh, that’s a good excuse. Makes you sound like a martyr, instead of a coward.”

“A _coward_?”

“You’re either a coward, or you’re every bit as selfish as me, if not more so,” Milady says quietly but with surprising venom. “You want Aramis, and you certainly enjoy his devotion to you, but you won’t give anything up to be with him. You’ve spent, what, a year pulling him in and pushing him away?”

“We fell in love,” Ana says stiffly. “We couldn’t help that. And then I only stopped seeing him so I could work -” She stops, the words _work on my marriage_ caught in her throat – she feels a sudden flicker of shame as she realises that won’t win her any prizes for selflessness. No, she hadn’t been thinking about Aramis when she’d done that, just herself and her family. She changes tacks. “And it’s your fault we ran into each other again, isn’t it? It wasn’t my decision to get back into contact with him.”

“And you fought so hard against it,” Milady drawls.

Another protest dies on Ana’s lips, because in this one thing, this horrible woman may have a point. Ana had come by the station, when she didn’t need to, just to see him. Asked him to have coffee with her, and then morning tea as well the other day. She’d accepted him being assigned to protect her and she certainly hadn’t discouraged him from coming to visit her. All right, yes, perhaps she doesn’t avoid Aramis the way she should. She ought to cut ties with him until she’s sorted everything out with Louis – but she doesn’t know how long that will take, and she _loves_ Aramis, how she can she let him go? What if he moves on, finds someone else?

Which is… also selfish, now she thinks about it.

But she can’t just leave Louis. Her career is wound up in his, they have a child, her family would be furious, and… he’s all she knows. All she’s ever known. He’s defined her whole adult life. Sure, she’s frustrated in her marriage, even unhappy, but it’s familiar. It’s safe.

Aramis will always be the greater risk. He’s a flirt and a ladies’ man, she’s known him barely more than a year, and he’s had a life that is so far outside her sphere of experience it seems almost alien. That all makes him risky. But mostly, he’s the greater risk because she loves him, and that means he can hurt her. It’s one thing to admit the words, another to make them more than words – to leave everything she knows, horrify friends and family, and give her child a broken home, purely because she’s fallen in love. If she sacrifices everything for him and then loses him… the thought makes her cringe. It’s so much easier like this, with him in her life, but not integral to it – it will still wreck her if he does move on, but she’ll at least have the familiar, comforting cocoon of her world to wrap around herself again. She won’t be left with nothing.

Ana has never thought of herself as selfish before. She doesn’t like it. Of course, she likes the thought of being a coward even less. Surely agreeing to this reckless plan proves she doesn’t lack courage – although even as the thought crosses her mind, she admits that there’s different kinds of courage, and physical danger isn’t what scares her most.

“Why do you care?” she asks Milady, and for the first time sees a flicker of vulnerability on Milady’s face. Suddenly, a great deal of her indignance at the woman’s rudeness and cruelty vanishes, stripped away by surprise. “Dear God. Are you actually trying to _help_ Aramis? Are you looking out for him?”

“Of course not,” Milady snaps, but there’s a faint flush on her cheeks and her tone is far too defensive.

“You _are_ ,” Ana says, marvelling at it. She’s always assumed, based on her behaviour, that Milady didn’t care about anyone at all. “Are you friends?” It sounds absurd, but even as she says it, the sniping she’s witnessed between them transforms into banter in her mind. And she remembers Aramis’s story about the cat, too. Friends. Aramis is friends with Milady de Winter. How bizarre. And she’s trying to fix his love life for him… even more bizarre.

“Of course we’re not. Now, if you don’t mind, idiots with guns are about to come bursting through these doors.” Milady forces Ana into a hostage position again, this time a bit more forcefully than necessary. Ana could use one of the moves Constance taught her to try and get free – with surprise on her side, she might even pull it off – but instead she allows it.

After all, they’ll be here soon.

X_X_X_X

“And he’s… slipping out the back,” d’Artagnan says smugly. “Trying to avoid us. Must have gotten the phone call.”

“Guards?” Athos asks, already pulling the car out. When Rochefort looks back, he won’t see them immediately – Athos is very good at this – but it will make sense to him when they turn up there, having successfully tailed him. They’ve been following him for a little while, after all. Of course, if he’s as protective of Ana as he seems, he’ll be too distracted to think through any of this as it is, but there’s no point taking any chances. They’re using Milady de Winter tactics, making it seem like everything unrolls naturally, letting him pick his own path (to an extent, anyway) without realising he’s picking the direction they wanted.

“Two, from the look of it.”

Athos can feel himself tensing the closer they get to one of the properties Milady owns, the one they’re using for this – it’s currently between renters, lacking furniture, and empty of everything except for his ex-wife, Ana de Bourbon, and a gun. He came up with large parts of this plan, so it shouldn’t be stressful, except that then Milady then went through and took out all the little safeguards and cautions by calling them ‘unrealistic’ or ‘obvious giveaways’. Which is why they have real guns right now, with real bullets, because blanks are quieter and have less kick, and she said Rochefort might notice.

He’s beginning to think he hates her plans to help them even more than he hates the ones that screw them over.

Athos speeds up a little so that they’re bumper to bumper with Rochefort’s car, pulling over neatly just behind him so that he has no time to storm into the house without them, since that would really ruin everything.

They get out of the car at the same time as Rochefort and his men do. He glances over at them, does a double-take, and scowls, uncharacteristically emotional. “What are you imbeciles doing here?” he snarls.

“Keeping track of a suspect,” Athos says, settling easily into the role of stupid, slightly smug cop. “Can’t have you trying to flee the country, can we?”

“This is not the time,” Rochefort snaps. He glances over at the house involuntarily, and all of them let their gazes follow his. There’s a flash of movement at the window as someone looks out.

“Wait,” d’Artagnan says, voice going up in pitch. “Is that Milady de Winter?”

“Is that Ana?” Aramis says, sounding appalled.

“Is that a _gun_?” Porthos frowns.

“So now you see why this is _not the time_.” Rochefort grits his teeth and glares at them, but when he gestures to his men and tries to move forward, Porthos steps in the way smartly.

“What’s going on?” Athos lets himself sound lost, completely bewildered. He is, after all, supposed to be head over heels for Milady de Winter, and should therefore be shocked and confused to see her visibly holding a gun to another woman’s head. The fact that half of that is true is the only uncomfortable thing about it.

“We need to get in there,” Aramis says, frantic. “If she hurts Ana -”

“She wouldn’t,” Athos says.

“I’m looking at some fairly compelling evidence that she would!”

Milady steps away from the window, dragging Ana with her, and Athos turns to Rochefort and his goons. “Whatever’s going on, we don’t need vigilantes,” he snaps. “We’ll talk her down from… whatever this is. You three, hand over your weapons and stay outside.”

“No.” Rochefort looks wild with fury, but his tone is contained. “I need to be in there. I can fix this.”

“You can _fix_ this?”

Porthos clears his throat. “If he knows what’s going on here, that’s more than we do,” he points out reasonably. “I’ll stay out here with these two and you lot go in. Be careful, okay?”

“Fine,” Athos spits. “But no weapons, Rochefort, do you understand? We’re resolving this non-violently. Hand over your gun. And d’Artagnan, Aramis, neither of you is to shoot either, do you understand me? No matter what. _Understand?_ ”

“You’re not capable of making the difficult calls, not when it comes to your -” Aramis starts to say angrily, but Athos rounds on him and he shuts up and just glares instead. 

They don’t just disarm Rochefort – they take everything off him, including his phone and keys just in case. Then Athos goes around the back with Rochefort while the other two take the front. On the street behind the little house, a plump man with a phone is standing, looking concerned, and when he sees Rochefort he looks like he wants to come over and speak to him – but Rochefort makes a flicking gesture with his hand and the man nods and walks away.

“Friend of yours?” Athos hisses, slamming himself into the door until it gives way with a splintering noise.

“Is that really important?”

Athos stops, grabs Rochefort’s collar and yanks him close. “If you set this up…”

“I had nothing to do with this,” Rochefort snaps. “Your _darling_ wife is the one going around taking hostages -”

“We don’t know that’s what’s going on,” Athos says stubbornly, and Rochefort gives him a disbelieving look, and pushes away the broken door.

Then they’re in the gleaming, empty kitchen. Milady has the gun pointed at Ana’s head, and she glances between Aramis and d’Artagnan at one end of the room, and Athos and Rochefort at the other, then backs away until she’s in the hallway, dragging Ana with her. That leaves all of them in front of her, unable to shoot without risking Ana. “You brought the cops?” she snarls at Rochefort, looking wild with fury.

“Not my decision, I assure you,” Rochefort says, lips barely moving. He glares at her in absolute hatred. “But this plan was always destined to fail. I think I’ve made it clear in the past that I’m not a man you should cross, Milady de Winter. And yet here you are doing it again.”

“Please,” Aramis says, gun trained steadily on her despite the glare Athos gives him. “It’s okay, Ana. It’s alright. Milady, just put the gun down. Nice and easy. You don’t want to do anything you might regret later.”

Beside him, D’Artagnan quietly reaches for his phone and starts pressing in the code for emergency, but Milady acts before he can finish it.

She grasps for something with her spare hand, releasing Ana for a moment, and pulls out the little black box, Rochefort’s device, the illegal one that destroys electronics. “I wouldn’t,” she snaps loudly, pressing the button as she does so, and d’Artagnan pulls the phone up to look at it and then curses, raising his eyebrows as if she really has just ruined his phone. He shoves it back in his pocket and holds the gun with both hands, abandoning that idea.

“Anne,” Athos says helplessly, looking at her, gun still down by his side. “What’s going on?”

Her expression flickers. “Everything I do is for us, Athos,” she says in a murmur, but despite her soft words, her arm tightens around Ana and she jams the gun against the side of her head even harder. When she speaks again, her voice is still uncontrolled, but louder. “I’ll explain later. Please. You need to go. All of you. I want to speak to Rochefort.”

“Speak to me? You want to _speak_ to me?” Rochefort spits the words in absolute fury. “Release Ana now and you might live. But if you don’t let her go immediately, I’ll make sure you die screaming, you pathetic, stupid little whore -”

“Now, now, threats? I don’t think you’re in a good position to make threats.” Milady moves the gun so that instead of pointing at Ana’s head, it’s pointing at Rochefort’s. “If you had just kept to the fucking _deal_ -”

Ana lets out a panicked little sob and slams against Milady’s arm, throwing off her aim, and then drops to the floor, wrenching herself out of Milady’s grip. For just a moment, Milady is totally visible, her gun not pointed at anyone, an easy target.

Aramis shoots her in the chest.

X_X_X_X

It hurts like absolute fucking hell, like being kicked in the chest by maybe two hundred people at once, even through the bulletproof vest. Her vision literally blacks out for a second as she falls to the floor, and then Athos is there, panicked face visible as he presses his hands where it hit – ow, _ow_ , that makes it worse, but she understands why it’s necessary – and she lets her head thunk down to the floor, eyes staring unseeingly at the ceiling.

Through the spiralling, aching pain – this is going to be some bruise tomorrow, she thinks dizzily, and possibly some broken ribs as well – she can feel him crush the pellets of fake blood against her chest, can feel the wetness spread and ruin the blouse she’s never actually worn before because it hides her figure too much for her tastes. It’s good she didn’t throw it out, though, because hiding her figure means it also hides the vest. It’s also a good thing Rochefort isn’t the type of man to notice what someone like her is wearing.

She lets her vision blur, so that her eyes go blank as if she really is dead, and feels Athos pressing urgent, bloody fingers to her neck – possibly pretending to be trying to find her pulse, possibly actually looking for it, because even while wearing a vest being shot can result in death. She could be going into shock right now. She doesn’t think she is, but she _could_ be.

Then Athos is standing again, screaming something at Aramis, hands bright red with blood, and the two of them are fighting, and Porthos slams into the room and breaks it up, and Ana de Bourbon is sobbing in the corner and being comforted by Rochefort, and d’Artagnan is calling an ambulance. And Milady just lies there, faking death as convincingly as she faked unconsciousness for Sarazin’s men. Pretence, after all, is what she does. 

She’s vaguely aware of Ana hysterically begging Rochefort to get her away from here, and him giving in and all but carrying her out of the house, but she stays lying totally still until Athos places his hand on her arm again and says, a little plaintively, “Anne?”

Then she blinks – her eyes sting from being held open and staring blankly – and gives him a pained smirk, before looking over at his friend. “’You don’t want to do anything you might regret later’? Really, Aramis? I feel like of all the women you should say that to, I’m not one of them.”

“No woman ever regrets my undivided attention,” Aramis says, but his heart clearly isn’t in the banter. He’s already looking outside, worrying.

“Go,” Milady says. “Athos and I need to wait for me to be covered in a black plastic sheet before we can get out of here, in case he’s left someone to keep watch. It wouldn’t be convincing otherwise.”

“Also, you need medical attention,” Athos says grimly. “We don’t know what damage you could -”

“Yes, yes,” Milady rolls her eyes, and then returns her attention to Aramis. “So we’re stuck here. But the rest of you need to get to Rochefort’s place immediately. Make sure you aren’t spotted, though.”

“I still don’t see why Ana has to pretend she’s too afraid to go back to her own place,” Aramis says. “We could have bugged her and Louis’s home without needing to go to so much effort, and it would be far easier for us to get inside if something goes wrong.”

“He’s comfortable in his own home, he thinks he’s safe,” Milady says patiently. She tries to sit up a little and subsides with a groan. “He’s ten times more likely to admit to his crimes there than anywhere else. He’s used to the place being covered in bug scramblers, after all, and he doesn’t know Ana wiped them all out earlier with that device of his.”

Aramis looks at her disapprovingly. “I still don’t like it.”

“Why are you the one whining at me? You just shot me.” She huffs out a pained breath.

He doesn’t seem able to come up with a response for this, so he just shakes his head again, and the others leave her and Athos alone, staring at each other.

She’s the one to break the silence. “Are you going to yell at me again?” she wants to know. “You have a habit of doing that when the situation gets dangerous.”

“I’m trying to give that up. It seems ineffective. You just do even more dangerous things and don’t tell me about them when I do that.” After a moment, Athos gently strokes a strand of hair back from her face and leans in to kiss her forehead. “But if we have any other option, I refuse to ever be part of a plan where you get abducted, beaten up or shot again,” he says quietly.

“Got it. Next plan, we shoot d’Artagnan.” As if she’s going to be a part of any of their plans in future. Her heart contracts painfully at the thought.

“I’m serious,” he insists, voice far too pained, and his face far too close to hers. “I’m sick to death of seeing you hurt, and even more sick of being the one who hurts you. I can’t do it anymore. I _can’t_.” His voice breaks.

“You don’t have to,” she murmurs, and reaches up to trace his face, to try and soothe the expression of worry away. Before this stupid case, she never thought she was over him, but she had at least built up her walls again. Now, she thinks they’ve fallen down completely. She’d forgotten how he looked when he was scared for her, blue-grey eyes alight with concern, forehead crumpled, worried frown crooked and somehow comforting. She’d forgotten how it felt to love him like this, completely and brokenly, to feel like she was bleeding emotion with every word and act, and to not even care that was the case.

He gathers her into his arms, and winces at the way it stretches his own slowly healing injury just as she winces at how it hurts her bruises. Walking wounded, that’s the two of them.


	20. A Kiss Goodbye

“I just don’t feel safe anymore,” Ana whispers. It’s the truth. However, it’s not something she’d normally say, and certainly not something she’d normally say to Rochefort. She’s trying to be delicate and sensitive, because that seems to be what he wants. And that, too, is confusing to her – he’s known her for her whole life, and she’s never thought of herself as delicate or sensitive. Where did he get the idea that’s who she is?

“I promise I will never let anyone like her near you again,” Rochefort swears. He takes her empty glass from her and refills it, then presses it back into her grip solicitously, going so far as to cup her hands around the glass. It puts his face level with hers. He doesn’t blink enough. She’s always thought that he doesn’t blink quite enough. “Or anyone like that foolish Lothario of a detective. You _have_ had quite a week, haven’t you, my dear?”

And there’s her cue. There was only so much guidance Milady could give her – guesses at weak spots, how to provoke him, how to lead him. They were useful tips, yes, but the truth is Ana doesn’t need anyone’s help to gently prod a man in the direction she wants him to go. She’s been doing it to Louis for as long as she can remember – never maliciously, but simply because Louis has always liked to maintain the pretence of being the more forceful of them, the more intelligent, the more decisive. It was easier to let him think that. If she was direct, he whined about how opinionated she was, how difficult. Easier just to delicately nudge him in the right direction, for his own good. A lot of the time, she resents him for that, for having to always make herself _less_ so he can be _more_ , even if it’s unintentional on his part.

“I don’t know,” she says, tilting her head to let a lock of blonde hair fall across her tear-streaked face, woebegone. “Maybe I misjudged Aramis.”

“Maybe you… what?” His voice cuts across the room like a whip, but Ana doesn’t flinch. In fact, she pretends not to notice at all.

“I know you say he has a pattern of falling for women like me, that he doesn’t really care.” Ana looks away, so she also has an excuse for not noticing the growing rage and panic in Rochefort’s face. As she surveys the room, she wonders idly where Milady hid the bugs and cameras, and prays to God they haven’t been discovered already by the guards. She also prays the little device Milady stole from Rochefort worked and all the bug scramblers are down. “But look at the facts – he _killed_ someone for me, to protect me. He betrayed one of his closest friends and ruined their relationship forever. He’ll probably face an inquest or something at work for what he did. I mean, Louis won’t even sit through a _ballet_ for me. Maybe I owe Aramis an apology.”

She realises with a sudden surge of surprise and guilt that maybe she actually does. She believed what Rochefort said about him, at least a little. Or maybe she never did, and just used it as an excuse not to leave her husband and finally take that leap into the unknown with him – and really, isn’t that even worse?

Rochefort looks infuriated. “He tried to force you into a kiss just the other day! And I’m sure he would have taken it further if you hadn’t stopped him. Acting like he has the _right_ to touch you, like you’re his.”

“Passion,” Ana says, weakly defensive, because apparently in his head she’s the kind of woman who writes love letters to imprisoned serial killers and she may as well go with that. “Oh, I know, I know what you’re worried about. But Rochefort, no one’s ever loved me enough to do something like that before. Can you imagine? I’m so _tired_ of living with a man I don’t love, and so _tired_ of watching the man I do -”

“The man you do?” His head jerks up, and his face is immediately alight with the holy fervour of a televangelist. 

“Don’t play games with me, Rochefort. You know how I feel about you – well,” she amends quickly, because he’s looking like he’s going to pull her into a kiss and then she might throw up. “How I _felt_.”

“Felt…” His joyful expression dims.

“Today, I was abducted because of you.” Her voice shakes. “Held hostage. She said she wanted some file, and you didn’t bring it. My _life_ was worth less to you than a bundle of papers. I could have died, and you won’t even tell me why! More than fifteen years waiting for you to… for you to care, and you’ve never given the slightest sign you do.”

“Ana…” he breathes, trying to embrace her, but she pushes him away. “You matter more to me than you could possibly -”

This is… deeply unnerving. But she’s going to get this damn confession whatever it takes. “No, I don’t think I matter to you at all. You supported me marrying Louis, and you were fine with me staying with him, even when you must’ve known how unhappy I am. You let me come close to death today. You’ve never given up anything for me. Maybe I could be happy with Aramis – at least I can be sure he’s willing to kill and die for me.”

She can almost see the snap. “You think that… that _pathetic_ excuse for a man cares for you half as much as I do? I’d do anything for you, _anything_ … you have no _idea_ how I’ve protected you. How I’ve fought for you.”

“Fought for me?” She makes a disbelieving noise and steps back from him, shaking her head. “I need to go home now. I’d rather be there than listen to you – listen to you try and _pretend_ that you feel anything for me -”

“I have dealt with every threat to Louis’s empire,” Rochefort says. He’s barely breathing and his eyes burn like the fires of Hell. “Not for that – weak, sad little fool of a man, but for _you_. You deserve to be rich, adored, powerful beyond measure, and I’ve made sure you stayed that way.”

“You’ve kept Louis rich, not me.”

“But it will all be yours someday. Yours and your son’s. I’ll make sure of it.”

Ana lets out an incredulous laugh. “What, are you planning to kill Louis? I doubt it. If you were going to, you would have done it decades ago, instead of condemning me to marriage with a man I feel nothing for, watching from a distance as I suffer. You’re all talk.”

“I took care of Richelieu for you,” he snaps, goaded too far. “The man was going to manage the companies if Louis died. He was going to take everything from you, money, control, power, even your son. I stopped him.”

“You… you did?” Ana softens her expression, her lips part slightly, staring at him in awe. “For me? Because of how he treated me? I was always so scared of him.” To an extent, that’s true. Richelieu could be quite unnerving. Then she lets the awe drop away into bleakness and shakes her head again. “No, no, you didn’t. I don’t believe you. You just want me to be grateful to you so I’ll forget that you nearly got me killed -”

“I protected you from Richelieu,” Rochefort snaps. “I dealt with him before he could hurt you – before he could hurt _us_. Everything I do is for us, Ana, I swear it, and I’ve done more than you’ll ever know. That promiscuous little fool risked nothing when he killed that bitch, but I’ve risked _everything_ for you. I think about nothing but you. I’d burn down the world for you if you wanted it. You’re mooning over _him_ for impulsively shooting a whore? I’ve killed for you more times than I can count. Richelieu’s only the latest threat I’ve saved you from.”

“You killed Richelieu,” she says wonderingly, as if she’s just starting to believe him. It’s an effort to ignore the bile in her throat. _More times than I can count_. Tears spring to her eyes again, but she gives him her best lovesick look, trying to play them off as tears of happiness instead of horror and grief. “You really did. You love me that much?”

“More,” he says fervently, seizing her hand and pressing it to his lips, a dark parody of a courtly knight with his lady. “I’m the only one who loves you, Ana, the only one who really knows you. I knew you were meant for me from the moment I first saw you. I would kill anyone in the world to make you happy.”

And to think, most women just get flowers. She wonders distantly if Marguerite’s friendship with her is what sealed her death warrant, and shies away from the horror of that thought. But she can be done now – he’s confessed. This should be enough to nail him to the wall, surely. More than enough. She needs to leave. She needs to be sick, and cry, and throw things at walls, and curl up into a little ball and cry some more. She needs to hold her son in her arms and press kisses to the top of his head until she remembers that there are good things in the world. She needs Aramis to pull her close and make her remember that not all love is ugly and wrong.

Rochefort says Aramis has never risked anything for her, but thinking of his words the other day, she knows that’s not true. He risked the only thing she ever asked him to. He risked his heart. He fell in love with a married woman, one who had every reason to stay married, a woman he knew might never be able or willing to give him the real relationship he deserved. Because he thought the risk was worth it. Thought _she_ was worth it. She’s spent a lot of time thinking about how dangerous Aramis is to her, how she could be hurt, what she could lose. Maybe she should start thinking instead about what she would gain.

She attempts to detach her hand from Rochefort’s gently, trying to look dizzy and stunned. It’s not too hard, because in a way, she is. A murderer. She’s alone with a murderer. “I need to get home,” she says. “I need to think.”

“No, don’t go.” He refuses to let her hand go, his own clenching on it until she winces. “Ana, please, we need to sort this out right now.” He forces her closer to him and she struggles. He looks like he’s going to kiss her and she can’t stand it, can’t _stand_ it. “Please, just say you love me too.”

“Of course,” she says, but she flinches away as he tries to kiss her, and his face darkens in response. She thinks for just a second, her fear, disgust and discomfort all showed in her expression. Just long enough for him to see.

“Then why won’t you show me?” he says slowly, and suddenly he’s not out of control anymore – or if he is, it’s in a different way. His panic seems to be settling, and now, rising like a monster from the deeps, suspicion takes its place. She can see him going over what he said, what she said. “Oh, I see. Did Milady de Winter say more than she should? Did you come back with me trying to find out if any of it was true? Were you trying to trap me just now?”

The answer must show in her eyes, because his hands tighten on her forearms. It goes from uncomfortable to painful in a moment, and she tries to pull away reflexively, but he’s holding her there. And then, horrifyingly, his mouth is on hers, and she’s struggling, and where are the cops? Where’s Aramis? Why aren’t they –

But she doesn’t need Aramis, she realises with a sudden flare of absolute fury. She’s not a trophy wife, or a damsel in distress, or Rochefort’s creepy ideal of her. So she slams her knee hard into his groin and when he pulls back with a cry she manages to get her hand free and jams a thumb into his eye. Constance is a damn good teacher.

He lets out a harsh squawk, and then his hands are on her even rougher in his fury, and she backhands him so hard it sends a sharp pain through her hand and wrist, and he falls back, and she grabs the nearby decanter of scotch and throws it down at him. It shatters against him and he lets out a loud noise of pain from both the immediate impact and the many shallow cuts, and she grabs a shard from the floor before he can react to defend herself with even though it cuts her hand, and raises it threateningly –

“Easy,” Aramis says, grabbing her arm gently. “I thiiiiink he’s down.”

Ana pauses, breathing hard, coming back to sanity. Aramis is next to her, looking cautiously impressed; d’Artagnan has his gun raised at Rochefort but worried eyes on her; and Porthos is scratching his head in apparent bewilderment. When she looks down at Rochefort, she can see why – he’s bleeding sluggishly from multiple cuts, soaked in booze, in the foetal position, one eye swelling closed painfully, his nose visibly broken, staring up at her with his one healthy eye like she’s the Antichrist. She thinks, suddenly, that maybe he’s actually seeing _her_ for the first time, not the sweet, quietly pretty twelve-year-old he became unhealthily obsessed with.

“Jesus,” Aramis says. “You should train our new recruits.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Constance said go for the eyes and groin, and grab any weapons you could, and I just -”

“No, no, definitely self defence, and he had it coming, but still. Wow.”

“Get her and Milady some actual weapons and we wouldn’t need SWAT teams,” Porthos agrees.

“Did you get it all?” Ana asks.

“Every word. We checked. Milady’s blanketed this place in well-hidden bugs and the guards didn’t know you knocked the bug scramblers out. We’ve even got video.” D’Artagnan smiles a little viciously. “We’ve _got_ him. Now we can finally tie up this stupid case and I can go help Constance with preparing for our wedding.”

“When is that again?” Porthos wonders out loud.

“Tomorrow!”

“ _Tomorrow_ tomorrow?” Aramis says, sounding appalled. “You should’ve reminded me, I already made other plans.”

“Mmm, me too.”

D’Artagnan inhales, clearly about to explode at them, and then notices their grins. For a second he opens and shuts his mouth in silence, and then he says, “I hate you both.”

Ana wants to tell him that she’s looking forward to the wedding, at least, but instead, she finds she’s laughing, if a little wetly. She’s not sure she can speak right now. Aramis rests a hand on her shoulder, warm brown eyes focused on her, and she leans into him and lets her slightly wild laughter slowly fade into a trembling smile. A few minutes ago, she wasn’t sure she’d ever feel safe or happy again, but all it takes is his admiring look and his hand on her shoulder, and she does. She _does_.

She forgot the way he could make the world feel safe again. He’d done it when Marguerite disappeared, comforting Ana when no one else could, but suddenly she also remembers that she’d comforted him as well when the case kept turning up no leads and lots of dead ends. That was when she’d fallen in love with him – she’d been smitten already, with his handsomeness and his charm and his wit, with the twinkle in his eyes, but she hadn’t been in love. It hadn’t been the attractive, gallant hero that finally made her fall. No, she’d fallen in love with a sad, worried man, scared by his own helplessness to save someone no matter what he did, and he’d fallen in love with a woman who felt exactly the same. It had been… real. It is real. Suddenly, she’s sure of that, more sure than she’s ever been before. He scares her, _because_ it’s real, because she loves him, and she’s never been in love before, and because loving him means stepping off the simple pathway she’s been on since she was too young to know what she wanted. But it’s time to admit, really admit, that it’s real. No hiding. No excuses. They _fit_. It’s not the thrill of the illicit or a fantasy of knights in shining armour, it’s more than that. Something worth risking her job, and ending her marriage, and disappointing her family, and even worth risking hurting her son.

_Aramis_ , she wants to say, _Aramis, I’m sorry. I think I used my son as an excuse not to be with you; I think I used my job, my family, even my upbringinging. I think I used your reputation and your history too. I’m not as perfect as you think – I don’t like change, and I can be selfish, and I prefer to blame my choices on other people or just the world._

She wants to say, _Aramis, I’ve always wanted to really fall in love, but then when it happened I wasn’t willing to treat it as anything more than the self-indulgent fantasy it started out as. I wasn’t willing to take the risk and really be with you. I’m sorry. I know I’ve hurt you. You’ve been so patient._

And most of all she wants to say, _you know, I do love you, I really do. I’m sorry that I’ve been scared of that for so long._

But she can tell him all that later, when they’re alone, because she’s suddenly sure there will be a later, and they will be alone in it, and he’ll listen.

They’ll probably want her to stick around for a while, give her statement, answer questions, comfort her. But she hopes to get it over with quickly, because with a sense of certainty she’s never felt before, she knows it’s time to talk to her husband. Past time, even.

X_X_X_X

Athos is worried.

The moment after the doctors finished checking Milady over (she had one broken rib and was very badly bruised, but all they could do was give her anti-inflammatories and pain relief) she kissed him on the cheek, said she had something to do, and disappeared. He expected her to turn up at his that night, but she never did, and she didn’t answer her phone.

He’s checked her hotel five times – twice last night and three times this morning – and there’s no sign of her. He’s called all of the others, texted her multiple times, and phoned nearly every five minutes. Two hours ago he went into the precinct and looked at whatever current reports he could find in case Rochefort’s men had tried for some sort of revenge, nightmare images of her broken and bleeding in some alley driving him mad.

So when he lets himself into his apartment again, sleep-deprived and panicking, and she’s lounging on his couch, he’s torn between wrapping his arms around her as tightly as he can and shaking her until her teeth rattle.

In deference to her broken ribs and his own slowly-healing GSW, he does neither. “Where have you _been_?”

She looks surprised for a moment, but then one side of her lips curls up into a smirk. “Having a wild orgy, obviously. I’d tell you their names, but there were all these NDAs I had to sign -”

“Anne. Come on.” He gives her a look.

She sighs. “Organising things, Athos. I had to hire someone to look after my properties here, fill out preliminary immigration forms, pack up my belongings… I’ve been putting it off, and I shouldn’t have been. I _told_ you I needed to go sort things out.”

“You didn’t answer your phone!”

“It’s with your IT department.” She looks at him as if he’s a bit mad. “It’s one of the places all my bugs back up to, remember? They wanted it for evidence, just in case.” 

Athos makes a mental note to be even more cold and sarcastic to the precinct’s IT area the next time he speaks to them. For God’s sakes, they could have just answered the fucking phone. For now, though, he has bigger concerns.

“We just brought down a man who’s known for both his emotional instability and his willingness to have people killed,” he spells out, closing his eyes in exasperation. “And you went MIA.”

“Hmm. Right. Are you saying I shouldn’t do that again?”

“No, no, by all means, give me an early aneurism. That’s what we need around here, more dead bodies.”

She gives him an eye roll. “I had to get everything packed before my flight.”

The bottom drops out of his stomach. And also out of his world. “Your flight? When’s your flight?”

“Sometime this evening?” she tilts her head to the side, deliberately blasé, as if she can’t see the expression on his face. “In four hours, I think. You know, without my phone, I lose all sense of the passage of time.”

“You’re leaving today? In only a few hours?”

“Hence the packing.”

“Packing,” he echoes her words, still winded. “You spent what would have been our last night together packing?”

“As wonderful as the alternative would have been…” The smile she gives him is thin and somewhat bitter. “Come on, Athos, what would we have said? I know you said yesterday that we still have ‘now’, but we would have spent the whole time knowing ‘now’ was over. I don’t think I could have taken another night curled around you, and still -” She breaks off, even though he really wishes she would finish.

He’s been trying not to think too much about her leaving for this new life in England. If he had, he would have assumed their last night together would be rough, wild and raw, a final surge of the desperation they always have to be close to each other. Now he actually considers that, though, he sees her point. Every minute would have been pure torment, however much they tried to pretend otherwise. And letting her go in the morning would have been like tearing out his own insides.

He clears his throat. “But you came here today anyway.”

“Just because I didn’t want a twenty-four hour long goodbye doesn’t mean I wasn’t going to say goodbye.”

“I’m surprised the DA’s office is fine with you leaving so soon,” he says. “Don’t they want you to testify?”

“Well,” she gives him a look that’s both wry and wicked. “I won’t tell them if you don’t.”

“You’re fleeing the country?” He’s almost amused, or he would be, if he could feel anything at all. Unfortunately, he’s distracted by the full, painful thudding of his heart. He wants to ask her to stay. Can he ask her to stay? _Should_ he ask her to stay?

“Not exactly. Just… leaving prematurely. I’m not wanted for anything, not anymore, so I think they’ll let me go. Shouldn’t you be getting ready for d’Artagnan’s wedding?”

“Are you sure you want to leave so soon?” he persists. “There’s Richelieu’s will reading soon, and you’re bound to get something from him, you should stay for that. And don’t you want to see Rochefort’s trial? There’s a lot of evidence, sure, but your testimony could help -”

“Are you saying I should stay?” she tilts her head and regards him thoughtfully, but he can’t tell what any of the thoughts are. “Athos, I’m unemployed. My boss is dead. Rochefort destroyed all our files. I don’t have any friends here. I’ve never had any family. I have lots of people who’d quite like me to drop dead, though. Be honest – what’s _here_ for me? Can you name one thing?”

_Me. Me, me, me, me._ He wants to say it so badly that he can feel the word sitting in his throat, blocking him from breathing, making his vision blur momentarily with tears. _I’m here_. He has to grit his teeth to stop them coming out, looking away from her.

Porthos said it had to be about what she wants, what she needs. And what she wants seems to be a new start. She deserves that. He has no right to stand in her way, no right to try and play on whatever lingering emotions she has for him to keep her somewhere she’s unhappy. After everything he’s done, he has no rights at all.

“Athos? Is that it? Are you saying I should stay?” She looks amused and a little disdainful at the thought, but her eyes are fixed on him like the answer really matters, although he can’t imagine it could.

“No,” he manages to choke out, and it _hurts_. “No, I’m not saying that.”

“I see.” She hesitates, then moves forward to place a cool kiss on his cheek. “You should get going. And so should I. I don’t want to miss my flight.”

She turns to leave, but he catches her wrist and swings her back in for a proper kiss, unable to resist it. There’s an edge of desperation to the embrace – he kisses her fiercely, wantonly, pressing against her like he wants the two of them to merge into one person, almost bending her in half with the force of the kiss. She wraps her arms around him, clutching at his shoulders, and judging by the way her fingers dig into him it’s only partially to keep herself from falling.

Just as it’s getting truly uncontrollable, though, about to go to the couch or the floor, she pushes gently at one of his shoulders. Even in the midst of all his roughness and need, he dimly recognises the gesture as a genuine one, and so he straightens them both and releases her, not without some regret. Her lips are swollen and red and she looks flushed and dizzy, but she steps back, giving him a strange sort of nod. The foot between them may as well be miles, hundreds of miles, even – how far is England?

“One more thing,” she says softly.

He doesn’t think he can take much more. “What?”

“The other day, you apologised,” she says slowly, like she’s searching for words. “For how everything happened back then.”

“I know it’s not enough -”

“Shut up, Athos.” Her trembling smile takes some of the edge out of the words. “I decide things for myself, remember. I should have said this then. What you did was awful, and I’m not excusing it, but that you’re sorry and that you want to try and find a way to make up for it, to make it right, that means a lot. More than you could ever know. Thank you for that. I don’t know how much it helps, but for what happened between us five years ago? I forgive you.”

“You… forgive me.”

“I do.”

“I don’t deserve it,” he croaks, painfully aware of that fact.

She shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes we get more than we deserve. You can keep hating yourself if you want, that’s up to you, but I can’t help thinking that’s a waste of time. And you don’t have to forgive me for what I did, either, just because -”

“I do,” he blurts out the words quickly, then takes a deep breath and says it slower. “I do. I forgive you. At the time… what hurt the most was thinking that it was all lies and betrayal, that you never really cared. Now I know…” He cuts himself off before he can continue that sentence, because what’s he going to say? _Now I know that you loved me, at least until my brother’s spite, your lies, and my blind fury ruined that?_ Some things are too depressing to acknowledge. “Now I know you didn’t mean for it to happen like that.”

“I don’t think anyone could have foreseen that particular turn of events,” she says, a little dryly, but the slight glassiness in her eyes give away how much it means to her, to be forgiven. How much it means to them both. Now they can go forward, he supposes, finally move on from this and really live, without each other –

And now any brief burst of relief and contentment at what she said abruptly dies. He doesn’t want anything ‘without each other’. A dark, nasty part of him wonders if he’d prefer the reverse, the two of them despising and tearing each other to bits forever, provided they stay close by to do it. He could take her to pieces every day and vice versa, they could spit obscenities into each other’s faces, they could leave scars on each other’s skin and invisible wounds on each other’s hearts, so long as she just stayed here instead of _leaving_ …

“Well,” he says, voice hoarse, for want of something better to say. “I should get to d’Artagnan’s wedding.”

“Yes, you should.” She leans in and gives him one last lingering kiss on the cheek. “And I should get to the airport. I _am_ disappointed I didn’t get to see you in a tux again, though. We always have such _terrible_ timing.”

X_X_X_X

When Aramis opens the door, he’s not expecting the sight in front of him. He blinks. “You’re not Porthos,” he says, surprised. Porthos only lives two blocks away, and apparently his car has some issue with overheating right now since he took it on a really long drive, so the plan was for him to walk over and Aramis to give him a lift.

Ana smiles, but there’s something not quite right about it. She looks shaky, nervous. The perfectly applied make-up, elegant hairstyle, and lovely dress don’t quite manage to disguise it. “Disappointed?”

“No, you’re just as attractive,” he assures her, keeping a perfectly straight face.

“Only just as?” She considers it, then her smile widens slightly. “You know, I’ll still take it as a compliment.”

“Sorry, I can’t go any higher than that,” he says. Her nerves are starting to infect him – the buzz he gets from seeing her is morphing quickly to jitters. He knows his smile is getting slightly skewed as well. “Porthos would sulk.”

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”

“I assume it’s not for a lift.” She does, after all, have a driver.

“Well, actually…”

“Oh!” Aramis blinks. “Of course. No problem.” Porthos will have to be in the back, which he won’t enjoy, but that’s less important than how confused he is right now. Is Ana in some kind of delayed shock? After everything with Rochefort she’d requested they drive her home to Louis, saying she was fine and didn’t want to stay at the station or get checked out at the hospital. It had made Aramis sick with jealousy and hurt that she wanted to be with her husband instead of him, but he’d swallowed his feelings and hadn’t said a word, not sure he had the right to.

“It’s not about the lift, exactly,” she says slowly, struggling for words. “It’s more… I wanted to ask if you’d be my date. To the wedding. I’ve heard that the singles’ table at weddings are awful.”

He nearly automatically says he doesn’t think they even have tables, let alone a singles’ table, but then the meaning of her words registers. “Single.”

“As of last night, I’m officially separated with my husband,” she says. “I spoke to a lawyer this morning. Some of them work on commission, did you know? She talked about backdated pay for all the unpaid work I’ve done for Louis over the years, and my impact on the company’s reputation, and what he’s done with the money my family invested when I married him…” She seems even more nervous now, almost babbling. “I told her all I want is my son. She thinks that won’t be a problem. Louis seemed willing to share custody, but I don’t know if he’ll stick to that, especially once he hears about y -” She cuts herself off, flushing.

“About me,” Aramis echoes, feeling a little shocked. His smile starts taking over his face, until he knows he’s grinning like a fool. She did it. She left him. _Finally_.

“It will be complicated,” she says quietly. “Very complicated. Louis might be furious, at you as well as me. I have a child. I know you like him, but there’s a difference between liking him and living with him. And I know you said you wanted me to come stay with you, but I’ll understand if you’d rather not jump into that, if you’d rather just date like normal for a while. I think that might be better for little Louis, as well – give him time to get used to you. I know this will all be – I know this is – I am – I’m difficult.”

“I like difficult women,” he says, without thinking, and then immediately curses himself. If any part of her really thinks he’s only after the chase, or the challenge, or something like that, he’s probably not helping. “I mean -”

To his amazement, she covers his mouth with her hand. “It’s fine,” she says, words stumbling over themselves. “You can say what you want. You’re not – you’re not your past. And I’m not mine. I’m sorry for saying otherwise. And I’m sorry for taking so long. I probably owe you some other apologies as well, but if Porthos is about to show up, perhaps we can talk about it later -” 

His first impulse is to say she doesn’t need to apologise, but he stops himself. His second idea is to make a joke about, seductively suggest a specific kind of apology. He manages to resist that too. “That sounds good,” he says instead, slowly. It’s true, he doesn’t expect apologies from her. But if she wants to talk, he wants to listen, wants to understand. It is, if nothing else, a place to start. They’ve spent over a year stalled – a real beginning is all he wants. They can figure out where they stand, and where to go next, and for once they’ll really be going _forward_.

“Good,” she says. It means nothing, but her smile holds everything. Hope and apology and promise and regret and, above all, love. 

When she touches her lips to his, the kiss contains all of that as well.

X_X_X_X

The wedding is beautiful.

“It really is a day for true love,” Aramis says soulfully afterwards. He hasn’t stopped grinning in hours, although Ana abandoned them right after the ceremony to go to her son’s swimming lesson.

Porthos is pretty happy himself. He’s meeting Alice in an hour, and he has a pretty good daytime buzz going. But he tries to catch Aramis’s eye to signal he should shut up because apparently Aramis hasn’t noticed that despite Athos’s fixed smile throughout the ceremony, his eyes tell a different story.

Aramis continues obliviously, “D’Artagnan and Constance getting married, me and Ana officially dating, you and Alice on your third date -”

“Me and the open bar going steady?” Athos says dryly.

“There wasn’t an open bar,” d’Artagnan says, joining them. Normally, he might sound worried, but he doesn’t seem any more able to stop grinning than Aramis. “We’re not all… millionaires? How rich _are_ you, exactly? Anyway, we can’t afford to keep you in scotch, not and pay for our honeymoon.”

“Congratulations,” Athos says, fixed smile becoming almost genuine as he looks at their young friend. “It was a beautiful wedding. Although I question if you’re really ready to be a husband, given you’re over here talking to us instead of dragging your new wife off to be alone together.”

D’Artagnan laughs. “That’s why I’m over here, to say goodbye. Although she’s the one dragging me.”

“I do love a forceful woman,” Aramis says dreamily. Everything he’s saying is coming out dreamy, right now. As happy as he is for his friend, Porthos hopes this isn’t a permanent change, since that along with his obliviousness is making holding conversations with him a little difficult. “Speaking of which, did you end up finding your other half, Athos?”

“His other half?” d’Artagnan says, looking somewhere between amused and appalled by this. “Are we really going to joke about that now?”

“I’m serious,” Aramis persists, managing to focus again. “I assume you’d have let us know if she was dead in a ditch, but you _did_ call me three times last night asking if I’d seen her. Let me guess, she was in another wine bar, celebrating never having to work with us again?”

“Packing,” Athos says, his voice too level. “Her flight leaves today. She’s at the airport now.”

Aramis nearly chokes on his drink. “And you didn’t _stop_ her?”

“Why would he stop her?” Now d’Artagnan just looks appalled. “I know she was helpful, more helpful than we expected she would be, but still. Thank God he’s finally rid of her.”

“He doesn’t want to be rid of her,” Porthos explains, as if to a child.

“What? Of course he does. After what she did to him -” d’Artagnan breaks off, flushing slightly.

“Wasn’t like it was all one way,” Porthos says fairly. He likes Milady, but it’s more than that – alone of them, he actually knows Athos’s part in what went down. Of course, it seems like d’Artagnan knows some things he doesn’t as well, judging by the tone of absolute disgust. Or maybe he’s just more judgmental than Porthos.

Aramis, meanwhile, seems to know none of the facts, but he does understand one thing. “And the sex is obviously out of this world, otherwise you’d have been able to stop doing the dirty after she screwed us over,” he says in a tone of utmost reason.

“Stop _what_?” d’Artagnan turns on Athos, mouth dropping over. “You two are sleeping together?”

Porthos gives him a confused look. “She’s been basically _living_ with him since he got shot,” he points out.

“Well, she’s the one who got him shot. I just assumed she felt guil-” d’Artagnan breaks off and seems to really consider his words for the first time. When he speaks again, he sounds incredulous at his own stupidity. “I assumed she felt _guilty_. What was I thinking?”

Athos looks around at all of them and then, with a soundless sigh, drains his drink.

“Anyway, whatever mistakes you might have made, there’s no reason to compound them by actually trying to start up a _relationship_.” D’Artagnan shakes his head. “I mean, can you imagine?”

“She _did_ shoot a man in the head for him.” Porthos gives a shrug when they look at him. “Just sayin’.”

“A relationship needs to be based on more than great sex and killing people for each other!” d’Artagnan objects.

“It does?” Aramis says, sounding genuinely confused, just as Porthos says,

“Well, alright, but not a _lot_ more.”

Athos holds his glass up to his eye level, as if by staring he can make it magically refill with more scotch, ignoring their attempts at humour.

“Anyway, thought you two were working shit out,” Porthos says, returning to the point. “Why’s she leaving?”

“She made the point that she has nothing here.”

Aramis’s head jerks up. “Wait, how did she say it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, was it…” Aramis puts on a falsetto screech that makes them all wince and sounds nothing at all like Milady. “I’m leaving because there’s _nothing_ here I want.” He curls his lip as if in disgust, narrowing his eyes at the same time.

“No one has ever sounded like that in all of human history, so no, Aramis, it wasn’t like that.”

“Okay. How about -” this time the voice is slightly less nails-on-a-blackboard, and Aramis widens his eyes and pouts in dramatic sadness, like a puppy dog watching its owner eat a steak dinner and not share. “I’m leaving because there’s nothing here for me Athos, is there, unless of course you…” He breaks off with a melodramatic sob.

“Wow,” d’Artagnan deadpans. “It’s like she’s in the room.”

Athos sighs. “She said ‘can you name one thing that’s here for me?’ and I couldn’t.”

“You,” Porthos says, confused by this level of idiocy. “You were supposed to say you were here.”

“You’re the one who said it has to be about what she needs,” Athos says. “And if she needs a fresh start -”

“No, idiot, he’s saying that’s what she _wanted_ you to say,” Aramis says.

“No, it’s not.” Athos frowns, putting the glass down. “I don’t think.”

“You’re so blind when it comes to her,” Aramis says. “She’s madly in love with you, you moron, and she’s even worse at covering that up than you are. She’d probably live in a tent in the Sahara Desert if you asked her to. So if you feel the same, maybe – I don’t know – try mentioning that to her?”

Athos pauses, brain clearly rejecting about half of what Aramis just said. “She doesn’t feel that way about me – I mean, maybe once, but not now. And in any case, if going to England is better for her -”

“I didn’t say to do what’s better for her, I said to ask her what she wanted,” Porthos shakes his head. If people just listened to his advice, they could avoid half this shit. “And clearly, she wants you. That’s been pretty obvious to all of us. So if you’d just _tell_ her you want her to stay -”

“You’re all nuts,” d’Artagnan says. “Athos doesn’t – Athos?”

Athos has frozen completely now, staring into the distance. “You think she’s in love with me,” he says flatly.

“Yeah.”

“And she wants to stay here?”

“Well, yes.”

“ _Fuck_.”

“Not too late,” Aramis says cheerfully. “Go tell her now!”

“I can’t get there before the plane leaves.” The colour’s draining out of Athos’s face, leaving it ashen.

“If you just call her -” Porthos starts.

“IT has her phone,” Athos says, already on the edge of panic. “If she’s gotten a new one, she didn’t give me the number.”

“Planes often leave late,” Aramis says hopefully. “In fact, they nearly always do, in my experience. If you start driving now – wait, how many drinks have you had?”

“I think I’m under the limit,” Athos says, starting to pull on his jacket in quick, jerky movements. His face is still pale. “I should be able to get there pretty quickly. And if the flight’s delayed -”

“You might be able to catch her. Go, go.”

“No, don’t go,” d’Artagnan says, still incredulous. “Think about this some more. Do you really -”

Athos is already almost out the door, deaf to both encouragement and criticism.

“Wait!” Porthos calls after him, but he doesn’t react to that either, so Porthos is left saying his next line to the space where his friend used to be. “I have an idea…”

X_X_X_X

“I’m sorry, Officer.” The woman at the desk looks genuinely regretful, instead of just annoyed by his increasingly-desperate questions. “But as I said, that flight left on time. Is the flight – is it in some kind of danger? Because I can contact the pilot -”

For a mad, mad moment Athos considers it, then sanity returns. “No, it’s fine,” he manages. “Thank you for your help.” He turns and heads straight for the airport bar, then collapses into a seat there. His wound still aches, but the pain in his chest can’t be wholly attributed to that.

She’s gone. She’s on her way to England. And if the others are right, she doesn’t want to be headed to England, she wants to be with him. If they’re right, she loves him. He’s still not convinced they _are_ right, but if they are… if they are, then once again he and his wife managed to end up apart despite being totally, stupidly, ridiculously in love with each other. 

He thought… he doesn’t know what he thought. The whole way here, he was too overwhelmed by feelings to think at all. He wanted to come up with some excuse to stop Milady from leaving him from the very first moment she told him she was going to England, but he wouldn’t let himself do it, because he thought it would be both selfish and self-destructive. Then evidence kept piling up that maybe they could work through things now, maybe they could be good, maybe they could be _happy_ , once all this other shit was dealt with.

He’s still amazed they talked about their problems, that over the past month they managed to follow a winding and painful path to some sort of forgiveness. Their talks didn’t always go well, but they’ve certainly gotten better. His fears about being violent to her again have started to seem more and more unlikely – he can almost chart the improvement. At first, he threatened to bodily remove her from his apartment, he physically intimidated her on purpose whenever they argued, he lashed out with cruel comments and harsh judgements. And at first she didn’t hesitate to use the past against him, mocking him with her history with d’Artagnan, enticing other men to watch him squirm, using his lust for her to control and humiliate him. But now… now, they’re different. They still get angry, but when they lash out, they step back, they step away. They can get through difficult conversations without devolving into pure rage and hurt. They’re more controlled. They apologise. They forgive. If he squints just right and doesn’t look too closely, they could almost pass for something healthy. Perhaps, in time, they could have been even better than before, even better than they were in the beginning – because this time, they could be honest. This time, they know their own flaws and each other’s, and this time –

Except this time, they can’t be anything, because she’s gone, and he has no way to reach her. Even if he goes and buys the first available ticket to England, he won’t arrive until hours after she does, and he has no idea where she’s staying in England or what part of the country she plans to live in. She has his phone number, of course, but she might not call him for months, if ever. And what if by then she’s moved on? Even if she hasn’t, how can he bring up the subject? It would have been a little selfish to ask her to stay, he knows, but in comparison it would be _monstrously_ selfish to try and guilt her into abandoning an entire life she’s spent months building to return to the ex-husband who was stupid enough to let her leave in the first place.

Of course, she bears some responsibility there as well. Why didn’t she just _tell_ him she wanted to stay, if that’s what she wanted? That she would like to try again? Unless, of course, she thought she had told him, like when she asked what happened next after their talk about Thomas, like when she asked if he wanted her to stay, like all those times she hinted in some small way that she wanted to be with him and he just assumed he was hearing what he wished so badly to hear. Fuck. _Fuck_.

“Detective de la Fere?”

He turns around in the chair to find an airport security guard giving him a worried look. “Yes?” he says.

“So that’s you, then? Detective de la Fere?” the man double-checks.

“Yes. Do we know each other?”

“No. I worked with Detective du Vallon the other week to catch some _dangerous assassins_.” He pronounces the last words as if even the sound of them gives him a thrill. “He gave us a call about half an hour ago, told us to look out for…” the guard consults a notepad. “A ‘tall, brown-haired man, wearing a tux, looks like he’s in serious pain, will probably be both brooding and drinking heavily’. You don’t seem to have a drink, but you _are_ at the bar -”

“Am I being kicked out?” He’s not even drunk yet. This seems excessive.

The guard shakes his head, looking appalled at the thought. “No, of course not, Detective! I just wanted to let you know, we have your suspect in the holding room. We’ve searched her thoroughly and didn’t find any weapons, but her luggage had multiple suspicious items, all of which we’ve noted down and put in plastic bags. We didn’t mess up chain of evidence at all, made sure -”

“My suspect,” Athos interrupts wildly. “My _suspect_?” He knows he sounds unhinged, and the guard takes a step back. “Curly dark hair. About _this_ tall. Incredibly beautiful. That suspect?”

“That… sounds about right, Detective.”

He stares at the man. He suspects he may be in shock. And then he manages to stand, swaying on his feet a little, and croaks out, “Lead the way, then.”

He stumbles after the man, who looks seriously concerned that he may have picked up a random drunk in a tuxedo instead of the policeman he’s after, but who helpfully leads the way despite this. Then he’s looking through a bulletproof glass window at his ex-wife, as stunning as ever, although judging by her gimlet stare this reunion isn’t going to be a sweet one.

“She’s a little… annoyed, sir,” the man says awkwardly, opening the door.

It’s not the right word for her, although Athos admires the man’s tact. The correct phrase might be ‘spitting mad’ or even ‘murderous’. When she sees him she tries to surge upright and forward, and he thinks if she wasn’t cuffed to the table, she’d slap him, she looks so pissed off.

“In the past month of working with you, I’ve been kidnapped, arrested, and punched in the face multiple times. I had to shoot a man in the head. I was stripped, threatened, blackmailed, and forced to wear a polyester fur coat.” She spits out the last words like they’re the worst part of it all. “And now apparently, a Detective du Vallon informed the airport I was dangerous and should be searched and held. Tell me, Athos, are you and your friends some kind of agents of divine retribution? Am I being punished? If so -”

He leans over the table, grips her shoulders, and kisses her, long and sweet and full of aching, desperate hope. She stiffens for a moment and then relaxes into it, pressing forward despite the uncomfortable angle to her bound arms, deepening the kiss slightly and making him dizzy. Athos doesn’t even register the security guard’s absolute confusion and discomfort. It starts soft but becomes carnal in moments, turning quickly from a chaste press of lips to the sort of messy, open-mouthed kiss lovers share on long lazy mornings, and from there to a tangle of teeth and tongues, his fingers tightening on her shoulders as he devours her mouth ruthlessly. It’s like a dance, the tempo of the music quickening, becoming more and more intense, and he buries one hand in her hair to push her even harder against him, until his lips are burning with the force of it, until she’s trapped between him and the table, trying to push up against him in fretful, needy movements -

It isn’t until a little, desperate moan erupts from the back of her throat that Athos remembers where they are, and why he’s here, and that they aren’t the only ones in the room. He pulls back, both of them gasping and red-faced, one strap of her top halfway down her arm and her hair wild and tangled, red lines on her wrists from where she pulled against the cuffs in her desperate attempt to get as close to him as possible.

She clears her throat and says, with an attempt at nonchalance despite her lack of breath, “I’m no expert, but I’ve been frisked before, and I don’t think it’s supposed to be this enjoyable. The audience is a little off-putting, though.” She slides her eyes to the airport security guard on the last bit, who’s still gaping at them.

“Let her out of the cuffs and leave us,” Athos says to the security guard, managing to keep his voice relatively steady, although he’s sure he’s lost basically all dignity and authority in the other man’s eyes. “Detective du Vallon – he – well – I’ll explain later,” he finishes lamely.

“Freedom, how unexpected,” Anne says dryly as she’s released. She doesn’t bother to rub at her reddened wrists or complain about the soreness, instead she just watches the security guard leave before swinging her gaze back to him. “What is this, some sort of goodbye? I assumed the DA’s office had sent you to bring me in before I left the country, but I take it I was wrong.”

“No. I just… I couldn’t let you leave like that,” he says awkwardly. “I had to see you again.”

“If you prevented me from leaving the country purely to get one last quickie in, then you’re paying for a replacement plane ticket, Athos. First class.” Her voice is sharp.

He quashes a cowardly impulse to pretend that’s why he’s here, even if only for a minute, to try and gather his courage. Her impervious expression doesn’t seem exactly promising. “No. I’m here to ask… I mean, to say…” his words trail off. He swallows, mouth suddenly dry. “You know, the others thought maybe you didn’t want to leave.”

“I didn’t want to leave,” she echoes.

“Yes.”

“And so to help me out, they decided to make it _physically impossible_ for me to leave?”

“Er, yes.”

“How kind of them.” She raises a hand to her head and exhales. “Athos, whatever this is, I _can’t do it_. This was hard enough already. So just say whatever you want to say and get it over with. Though honestly, at this point, I think we’ve pretty much said everything there is to -”

“I love you.”

She looks like a deer caught in headlights, and his heart crashes to the floor. “Well,” she manages, a bit weakly. “No, I suppose we haven’t said that.”

He feels a flush of humiliation at her non-reaction, but worse than that is the feeling of a door slamming in his face – the surge of grief and rejection that nearly makes him keel over, nearly brings him to his knees. She looks more like someone who’s been given an unpleasant shock than someone who’s received a declaration of love.

“And now I see it was a mistake to say it,” Athos manages to say, but knows his attempt at light, self-deprecating humour is ruined by the hoarseness to his voice, by the devastation in his face. “I apologise for the inconvenience. I’ll go find you a replacement flight.”

He turns to leave, but she’s grabbing at him before he can, uncharacteristically clumsy and frantic, fingernails digging into the muscles of his forearm as she tries to keep him there. “Wait, okay? Just… give me a moment.” 

He gives her a moment, standing stock still, swallowing convulsively. He gives her a minute, in fact. They’re frozen in place, breathing too harshly, both seeming too scared to move, too scared to speak, too scared to break the silence between them.

Eventually, though, she does speak. “Are you saying this because you don’t think it will change anything? Because I’m leaving?” The question is raw and almost plaintive. 

“No. I’m saying this because I want you to stay.”

“Oh.” Another pause, and then she says, a little bit shakily, as if she’s admitting something terrible, “Are you sure? I’m a mess, Athos.”

“You’re not…” The sentence fades out, because she is, a bit. But she’s also a wonder. He searches for words and finds them. “You’re a work in progress. So am I. And if you’re willing – I mean, if you want to – but I’ll understand if you don’t. After everything -”

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” she says, quickly. “I mean, of course I – you know how I feel about you.”

“Do I?” He’s never known anything, he thinks: every time he’s ever been certain of something, it’s crumbled to dust, leaving him snatching at nothing.

It seems like neither of them can manage full, coherent sentences right now. They’re too raw, too uncertain. It’s not like them. Usually, even at their worst, they’re more articulate than this. But right now he thinks they both sense that everything rests on this conversation: if it pivots one way, she goes and he won’t see her again; the other, she stays and – what? Neither of them know. They’ll head forward into that uncertainty together.

She reaches up and rests her hand on his cheek, tracing the corner of his lip with her thumb. “You should have figured it out by now.”

He waits, because it’s clear from the way she takes a long breath that she’s not finished, that she’s gearing herself up to say more.

“I love you too,” she says the words quietly, but they ring in the small space, fierce and certain. There is an almost religious fervency to her tone, as if she’s laying down holy truths to an unbeliever. “I always did. I always will. Nothing can change that. Not distance, not time, nothing.”

“Distance,” he echoes, mouth dry. “So you’re leaving anyway.”

“You could be happy without me, you know,” she says. “You really could. Move on, drink less, find someone new, settle down -”

“Oh fuck _that_ , Anne!” He raises his voice without meaning to. His eyes sting. “Stay or don’t, that’s your choice. But if you leave, don’t pretend it’s for me, to make my life better. If you’re scared, or angry, or you want to move on… I’d understand. But don’t pretend I’d be happier without you.”

“But what if you would?” She lets out a little broken laugh, voice cracking on it.

“I wouldn’t. The only times in my life I’ve ever been really happy have been with you.”

“I can’t bring back the past, Athos. I can’t be that women you thought I -”

“So don’t. Be yourself.” He softens his tone, pulls her closer, every part of him yearning. “You’re not half as scary or damaged as you think you are.”

“Be myself?” she snaps, and he sees tears in her eyes as well. “You don’t know who I am, Athos. Sometimes _I_ don’t even know who I am.”

“I know who you are,” he says, aware it’s stupid even as he says it. “Or at least, I know enough to know I love you. I know enough to… to know I want to know more. To know everything, and tell you everything in return. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

There’s a brief moment where he thinks she’s going to pull away, but then, instead, she gives him a shaky half-smile. “Of course it does,” she says. Her eyes are fearful, but there’s something longing in them as well, and he’s suddenly sure that she wants to be convinced. She wants him to convince her. “But even so… there’s a difference between loving each other and being good for each other. Forgiveness doesn’t make the past disappear. Do you really think we could ever be happy again?”

“I have no idea,” he says, and holds out his hand, one last try. “Stay here with me, so we can find out.”

It seems like the longest pause of his life before she reaches out and takes his hand.


	21. Where There's A Will

Milady wakes up to the sound of a blaring alarm, and is briefly disoriented: she hasn’t used alarms in years. After all, her work for Armand didn’t have set hours, and a lot of it was best done in the evening anyway – less people around, so less potential witnesses.

Despite his barely-this-side-of-functional alcoholism and general hatred of mornings, Athos isn’t beside her. He’s far more used to a regular schedule, after all, as a detective. The scent of bacon is wafting from the kitchen, and she smiles to herself at it, closing her eyes again. She shifts and then winces as she presses against something cold and painfully hard: apparently she’s been sharing her side of the bed with Athos’s handcuffs for most of the night.

She’s staying at his apartment for the moment. All of her things are in storage, after all. It seems reasonable for her to crash with him for a little while as she looks for a new place to rent or buy. Any time she brings back realtors’ fliers, though, they mysteriously disappear, and she’s fairly sure her ex-husband is responsible for that. Of course, that just makes her bring back more, because if he wants her to move in, he’s going to have to say the words.

On the other hand, now she considers it, he _was_ the first one to say the L word. Maybe she should be the one to bring up the idea of living together on a more permanent basis, or even suggest they go apartment shopping together. It’s too fast, of course, but they’ve only ever had one speed when it comes to their relationship – and it’s far, far over the speed limit. There’s no half-hearted way to be in love, not really. And if she owns the place, then maybe when it falls apart someday she’ll at least still have a home.

“This is the final proof that Richelieu really was evil,” Athos says as she enters the kitchen, looking up from a pan of blackened eggs. “Leaving orders that his will had to be read at this hour of the morning.”

“It wouldn’t be nearly so bad if you hadn’t kept me up so late,” she comments lightly, grabbing a plate.

He gives her a glare, although there’s no real annoyance in it. “Excuse me? How was that my fault? You’re the one who handcuffed me to the bed and told me to prove I was well enough to be back on active duty.”

“I’m not sure you’ve proved it to my satisfaction quite yet,” she says teasingly, already wanting him again, although she doubts they have time for much now.

“I think you were _satisfied_ quite a few times.”

She was, she was. But still, she can’t resist provoking him, licking her lips as she looks him up and down. “There’s always room for improvement.”

“I was being gentle,” he says, in the same teasing tone. “In light of your broken ribs.”

“How sweet of you.” She’s actually a little sore this morning, and from the way he moves, she can bet he’s feeling a few aftereffects as well. Considering how banged up they’ve gotten lately, they should probably be having a lot less sex than they are, or at least being a lot more careful about it. She can’t bring herself to regret any of it, though. It feels like she’s starving constantly, desperate for him to be against her, touching her, taking her: it’s like she’s unable to believe her good fortune unless she’s wound around him so tightly that every part of her is against him, the proof that this is real.

It’s _too much_ : she remembers that from those first days. The way the happiness she felt almost seemed too great for her body to contain, the way she would grin foolishly throughout the day, the way looking at him made her heart twist in her chest with overwhelming feeling. It felt impossible, too amazing to be real, too beautiful to survive. It _was_ too beautiful to survive. So now she tries to temper it, tries to hold herself back, tries not to freefall again: but every crooked smile and every shy glance from under his hair makes her fall in love again. Human hearts, she thinks, aren’t meant to hold as much emotion as all that, and it’s no wonder they break when they do.

She is more scared than she’s ever been. She is more hopeful than she’s ever been. It’s two sides of the same coin: she has everything to lose, and everything to gain, and _he_ is that everything. Always was, and always will be.

The little world they’re making together doesn’t feel exactly secure. The foundations tremble every day, little aftershocks of jealousy and anger and fear still echoing from the disaster of five years ago. The judgmental little comments d’Artagnan makes, the way Athos stiffens when men in the street look at her, the uncertain pauses she can’t help when she talks about her future, the five years of conversational landmines their respective jobs have created: every day brings a new opportunity for what they have to break. But she thinks she can feel it stabilising, _them_ stabilising, despite that. She thinks everything is settling into place, both of them slowly relaxing into this, finally starting to really move on – move on together, the only form of moving on either of them are really capable of. 

They cling to each other, now, and that’s better than clinging to the memory of each other.

One thing does bother her, though, and it’s wrapped up in all that memory. She was an angel to him back then, a miracle, a flawless human being. She wonders if to him she’ll always be an inadequate copy of a past version of her – or worse, she wonders if when he looks at her, he still sees the woman she pretended to be instead of the real, flawed, damaged version that’s in front of him now. It’s not like living in denial is exactly out of character for Athos. But of course, if he is, she’s incapable of trying to break him out of it. He lets her be herself, she can speak her thoughts out loud now the way she never used to – if he’s pretending that some of what she says is her exaggerating or joking or overcompensating, if he’s convinced himself she’s really just soft, sweet Anne de Breuil under the brittle outer shell of Milady, she can’t bring herself to destroy that for him. If that’s what it takes for them to be happy together, it’s worth it.

But sometimes it does make her feel lonely, lying next to him and wondering if anyone will ever really know who she is. She’s dark, and cruel, and hard, and has done unimaginably terrible things, and she thinks that his claim that he loves her anyway and wants to know everything about her is just Athos being Athos, him making a rash, heartfelt promise that he doesn’t actually have the ability to keep. It’s too amazing to last, just like back then. But she’ll keep it going as long as she can.

She’s good at living in the moment. With a life like hers, after all, she knows the moment is all you’re guaranteed to get.

“We should get going,” she says, but can’t stop herself from moving into the reaching circle of his arms, arching up to kiss him.

“Soon,” he agrees, and kisses her back, apparently deciding to enjoy the moment too.

X_X_X_X

The first thing they see when they get there is Porthos helpfully escorting someone out – someone who most definitely doesn’t want to be escorted out. The man is short, bearded, angry, and swearing in a mix of several languages as Porthos drags him out. When he sees Milady, he quiets immediately, glowering at her, and there’s real hatred in his gaze – Athos wonders if he should ask her for the story, but he’s developing a finely honed sense of when it’s best not to push her. If it’s something she wants him to know, she’ll tell him – and that, too, is a kind of trust, trusting that he doesn’t need every detail immediately, that they have the rest of their lives for him to hear everything, that if it’s something important then she’ll share it. He just wishes she didn’t seem so _scared_ of him sometimes – not that he’ll hurt her, which would be understandable, but more like she’s scared he’ll get up and walk away. As if he ever could.

“What are you doing here?” Athos asks Porthos, watching the man stalk off down the street.

“Treville called in me and d’Artagnan, something about keeping the will reading respectful,” Porthos says, sounding amused. “There’ve been three fights already.”

“What was Sestini’s problem?” Milady asks.

“Apparently Richelieu promised him he’d get some old, valuable bible when he died.”

“What’d he get instead?”

“One of those bibles you get for free in hotel rooms.” Porthos clears his throat. “With… interesting passages highlighted.”

“Oh, Armand,” Milady says, and Athos wonders if she knows how fond she sounds.

It’s beyond him, how she could have cared about the coldest and most ruthless man Athos ever met, but he’s learning that not all things have to make sense. After all, to most people, what he and his ex-wife are doing now would make no sense at all, in light of everything they’ve done to each other. But it being illogical and reckless doesn’t negate the warmth of her hand in his, or prevent the slightly foolish smile that forces its way onto his face whenever he looks at her.

It’s quite busy inside – it seems like Armand Richelieu left something to everyone he met, friend or enemy. Athos keeps spotting familiar faces. Some he expects, but some are people from old cases he thought he would never see again.

They make their way over to Treville.

“I hear it’s been interesting so far,” Milady says to him, smirking.

“Very.” Treville looks exhausted. “I think perhaps it would have been wiser for everyone to receive their bequests at different times – less chance of comparison, that way – but this is the way Armand wanted it, God rest his soul.”

It’s entirely in character for Armand Richelieu to use his own death to make it painfully clear to everyone exactly where they stood in his esteem, Athos thinks, but Treville’s words have the same kind of irritated fondness to them as Anne’s, so he shuts up and just nods.

“Have you spoken to the executors yet?” Milady wants to know.

“I have, yes.” Treville shakes his head as if bewildered.

“And?”

“He left me all of his books. And a list.”

“His books!” Milady’s eyebrows shoot up. Athos’s rise a little too, before he can stop them – everyone knows Richelieu’s book collection is ridiculously valuable.

“What’s the list of?” Athos asks.

“Recommended reading order.” Treville’s voice is dry. “I’m not required to follow it, of course, except that he left a heartfelt, beseeching message about it being his last request of me, in honour of our old friendship.”

Milady’s smile widens. “There’s thousands of them, aren’t there?”

“Yes. Yes, there are.” Treville takes on that expression of exasperated fondness again, but this time there’s real sadness in his eyes as well. “Him at his most generous and him at his most controlling, portrayed in a single act. But I think I’ll remember him every time I open one of them.”

“ _Things_ weren’t normally important to Armand,” Milady murmurs. “Those were.”

“I know,” Treville says, just as softly. “And that’s just like Armand as well, isn’t it? Only willing to show me he cares if it’s posthumous. You should go speak to the executors yourself.”

“Ah, so you two are finally here.” Aramis appears next to Athos. He looks distinctly bedraggled, and the grin he gives them isn’t nearly as bright as normal. “Get distracted, did we?”

Athos rolls his eyes at Aramis, although he’s not far wrong. “I thought Porthos said he and d’Artagnan were called into help. What’re you doing here?”

“Receiving a bequest, actually.” Aramis looks down and fiddles with the cuffs on his shirt self-consciously.

“What? On behalf of Ana?” Athos hazards. Ana de Bourbon was certainly close enough to Richelieu to receive something. Then another thought occurs to him. “Or Adele?”

“On behalf of myself.” Aramis clears his throat. “Although I suppose in one sense, yes, it’s thanks to Adele that I made the list of people receiving Richelieu’s worldly goods.”

“I’m not the only one who Armand made a last request to,” Treville says, tone dry but somewhat amused.

Milady starts cackling. Athos glances at her quizzically, but all she can do is flap a hand at him apologetically as she keeps laughing, helpless to stop. “He _didn’t_ ,” she gasps out when she manages to get a breath, but then she’s lost to her mirth again. Athos wraps a supporting arm about her, because it seems completely possible she’ll collapse under the weight of her own evil amusement. “That’s _amazing_.” 

Athos turns his confused gaze to Aramis. “What did he -” he starts to say, and then he notices deep scratches along Aramis’s arms. “My God. Really?”

“I’m officially a cat owner,” Aramis says dolefully. “Do you _know_ how much longer it’s going to take me to convince Ana to move in with me now?”

“Does your apartment even allow pets?” Athos wonders.

“Cats, yes.” Aramis’s expression darkens further. “I don’t know how they feel about demons that somehow materialise in feline form, though. It never occurred to me to ask. I’ve got Francois out in my car at the moment. I don’t know what to do next.”

Milady’s recovered enough to ask, “Are you supposed to leave cats in cars?”

“Ana’s watching him, which I suppose is at least proof of her undying devotion to me,” Aramis says. “When I left, Francois and little Louis were nose to nose through the bars of the pet carrier like they were communicating telepathically. Knowing my luck he’ll claw the kid’s face off and Ana will never speak to me again.”

“I can’t believe you’re already delegating all responsibility to Madame de Bourbon,” Milady says with mock disapproval. “Maybe she should have stuck with Louis, at least he could’ve hired pet-sitters.” The near-affection in her voice softens the jibe, making it seem more like friendly teasing than anything else.

Aramis makes a face at her. “I just came back inside to see if there were any further instructions – like what food he eats, any health issues, if he comes with a massive stack of cash. But no.”

“I hope you’ve learnt a valuable lesson from this.”

“That infidelity leads to cats?”

“That crossing Armand Richelieu leads to misery, I think she means,” Treville says.

“I don’t suppose he ever mentioned any contingencies to you…” Aramis says to Milady.

“What do you mean by contingencies?” she asks. “Are you asking who gets custody if you refuse?”

“No, I’m asking if Richelieu put any kind of more extreme revenge in place just in case I refused to take the bloody cat.” Aramis’s voice is dark with suspicion. “He can’t have been sure I’d agree to this.”

“What, you’re wondering if there’s a hitman outside your place with a pair of binoculars, waiting to take a shot if he sees any signs of abandonment or mistreatment?” Milady smirks. “Well, I wouldn’t rule it out. But no, Richelieu didn’t tell me anything like that. Maybe he didn’t want me arrested as an accessory.”

“To be on the safe side, maybe you should just turn the whole apartment into one giant cat tree,” Athos suggests, at his most deadpan. “Buy caviar cat food, give him sole control over the TV remote. And I think your bed should be Francois’s now as well.”

“Thanks. That’s very helpful.” Aramis rolls his eyes and disappears again, leaving them with only Treville.

Treville looks at Milady, and his face is grave, all earlier hints of amusement gone. “You really should go in to the executors. You can just go past everyone else – Armand left orders that you were the priority.”

“Why?” Milady looks confused, smile disappearing, as if the idea of Richelieu considering her an important part of her life is bizarre and unthinkable. “God, I bet he left me instructions too. There’s probably a list of people I have to avenge in his name or something.”

“Come on.” Athos tugs gently at her hand and she lets him lead her, her frown relaxing as he pulls her in and places a quick kiss on her forehead. “Let’s just get it over with, then we can go enjoy the rest of my day off.” Naked, preferably, although as always he’s willing to negotiate in regards to her heels.

“I have nothing _but_ days off,” she says, a little sourly. He knows it’s not that her inaction lately has been grating on her – it’s the lack of a further plan. A couple of weeks off is one thing, but she doesn’t know what direction she’s going in after that, and he thinks she finds that unnerving. 

Sometimes he worries that he’s one of the things she’s uncertain about – he keeps catching her throwing these little glances his way, and in one way the expression in her eyes is very reassuring, but in another it’s just worrying. There’s love, but also a kind of fearful awe, as if she can’t quite believe he’s there, as if she’s looking over just to make sure he hasn’t gone anywhere. 

Very similar to the way he sometimes looks at her, come to think of it. They know every inch of each other better than they know themselves, in some ways, but somehow each glance at her leaves him captivated, amazed by the arch of her eyebrows or the curve of her smile or the colour of her eyes, amazed that she’s still close enough to him that he can notice those things, amazed that he can reach out and touch her and hold her close. And always amazed that she _wants_ to be close, that she wants to be touched, that she feels the way about him as he does about her. It seems incredible to him that anyone could feel like that about him, but that _she_ feels that way about him is impossible, miraculous, an unearned and undeserved blessing.

The executors are in mid-conversation with Adele, but break off the moment they see Anne and start ushering Adele out. She looks slightly offended as they shut the door in her face, though given what Aramis got, Athos thinks she should be relieved to get a reprieve.

“Does Athos need to wait outside?” Milady asks.

“That’s the ex-husband?” The first executor checks a list of instructions. “No, that’s fine. He’s one of the people allowed to accompany you. We’ll need to see ID, though.”

Nonplussed, Athos proffers it, and it’s examined carefully. “Who else is on the list?”

“Just Captain Treville,” the second executor says. “If anyone else was accompanying her, we were supposed to insist they leave the room while she received her bequest, and then call the police.”

Milady straightens, expression sharpening. “Well, that’s interesting. Did he leave me the Ark of Covenant or something?”

“He left you this.”

It’s an envelope. Opening it reveals there’s a piece of paper, but it’s no heartfelt note – just the lease remaining on their offices, which surprises no one. There’s also two objects, though, which were distorting the envelope’s flatness. She slides the first one out and inhales sharply. “I can’t believe he found it,” she murmurs, moving it from one hand to the other and holding it close to her face.

Athos peers over her shoulder. It’s a delicate silver chain with a large, clear jewel on the end – a diamond. He assumes there must be more to the gift than that, though, and after a few seconds it occurs to him. “Is that the necklace Sarazin thought you stole?”

“Yes. It must have been hell to track down.” She winds the chain around her fingers and smiles to herself. “I fenced it and spent the money on seven fake IDs and several cross-country bus trips about a week after I got it.”

“Hang on, Sarazin was _right_?” Athos says incredulously. “You actually _did_ steal the diamond necklace he accused you of stealing?”

“Are you really going to lecture me for lying to and double-crossing the man who _garrotted_ me?” She turns her attention from the necklace to him.

“Of course not. But you never mentioned it to us either.” He can’t remember if she ever said outright that she was innocent of what Sarazin was accusing her of, but she certainly implied she was.

“As a rule of thumb, it’s best to remain vague around policemen. Especially ones who’ve just arrested you. I wonder what Armand meant by this?” She passes him the necklace and turns so he can fasten it around her neck while she tips out the other item in the envelope – a small key. She holds it up so he can see it clearly. It has a number stamped on it – P21.

“Safety deposit box?” He hazards.

“Secure storage unit, I think. Much larger.” She turns it over, studying it intently, apparently getting much more from it than he is. “Corporal and Redarrow padlocks, model – 980, maybe? 930 at the earliest. Army level, intended for heavy duty use. There’s only two places around here that use these, and the southside one is smaller – its rows only go to L. So it must be the north one.”

He stares at her, impressed. “You can get all that from a key?”

She rolls her eyes, trying to wave away his clear appreciation. “As if you couldn’t get just as much information from a weapon or the way a body is positioned. I was a thief, Athos, this is kind of my thing. Armand knew that – he would’ve known that once I saw this, I’d know where to go.”

“And he made sure you would be the only one in the room to see it,” Athos says quietly. “Along with me or Treville, that is, two people he knows would…” he trails off. Would what? Protect her? Richelieu can’t have thought that about him, surely, not with what he knew about their history. Still, this is bizarre. What the hell did Richelieu leave for her in that box?

Milady looks a little paler, a little concerned. “We should go now.”

He doesn’t argue. It’s not as simple as that, though, because they run immediately into Louis before they can get outside.

“Milady,” he says to her, looking nearly as sad as Aramis, although he doesn’t seem to have acquired a cat. “This really makes it feel like he’s _gone_ , doesn’t it? Even his funeral didn’t seem so… final. All of his belongings being carted off, packaged up, taken away by this flock of vultures -”

Milady pats him on the shoulder, still trying to edge past him – to Athos’s own surprise, he feels no flare of jealousy at the touch, no instinctive paranoia or distrust. “It’s tragic, Louis, I know, so confronting. Now if you’ll -”

“It’s not the only thing that’s been difficult lately,” Louis says mournfully. “Ana’s left me, have you heard? I didn’t do anything wrong -” While he’s not entirely incorrect, since Ana was cheating as well, Athos is still amazed Louis can say that to his former mistress without a single flash of self-awareness. “She just said she thought we’d outgrown each other, that it was time to find real happiness. I could really use someone to talk to about it, Milady, and you’re one of the best listeners I know. During our last rocky period, you were such a comfort, practically an angel of -”

Athos steps forward, and he knows his expression is forbidding, but then his ex-wife holds out an arm to keep him back and steps forward herself with a bright smile to deal with this new wrinkle.

“Louis.” Milady places her hands on Louis’s shoulders, and uses them to reposition him so he’s facing to the side. “You see that woman there? The blonde one? Very pretty?”

“I… yes?”

“Her name is Charlotte Mellendorf. We used to work with her father on occasion. Go over there and tell her you love hunting and want to discuss it over dinner at the most expensive restaurant you know. You can bring up your ruined marriage, but only after appetisers, understand?”

“What?”

Milady takes his arm and starts forcibly towing him in that direction as Athos watches. D’Artagnan steps out of their way, then continues on to Athos. He looks slightly mussed, but otherwise fine – perhaps Porthos has been dealing with the brunt of people’s frustration.

“What was that about?” he asks.

“She’s setting Louis up,” Athos explains, although he’s not sure that explains any of it. “Trying to move his attention away from her to someone else.”

D’Artagnan snorts. “Of _course_ she’s pimping out some poor woman to avoid the consequences of her own past manipulations.”

Athos frowns. Unlike the way Porthos or Aramis talk to and about Milady, there’s real venom in d’Artagnan’s voice, and it bothers him. “Could you ease off on the judgement, please? And with all the nasty comments you’ve been making to her lately.” He hasn’t caught all of them, but he can recognise that biting-a-lemon expression Anne gets when d’Artagnan’s said something cruel.

“You want me to be _nicer_ to her?” d’Artagnan shakes his head, still self-righteous. “After all the times she’s screwed us over in the past, after she lied to us, after she used us, I think I have every right to judge her for what she’s done. She wrecked more of our cases than I can count.”

“She’s tried to make amends for that,” Athos says. “She’s still trying.”

“And what about what she’s done to you, Athos?” d’Artagnan says angrily, coming to the core of it. “I mean, I still can’t believe you would take her back after -”

“Our past is _ours_ , d’Artagnan. It’s not yours to judge.” Athos lets his tone become hard, his expression forbidding. “Any issues between Anne and I are private. A few overheard comments do not make you an expert on our marriage.”

D’Artagnan looks frustrated, and starts to make another heated response, “Oh, come on -”

Athos interrupts him before he can continue. “No. I’m serious. How would you like it if every time I saw Constance I reminded her that she cheated on her husband? Or reminded you of how poorly you reacted when she refused to leave him the moment you told her to? Every one of us has made mistakes at some time. The rest of us restrain from throwing yours in your face.”

“ _She_ doesn’t.”

“Then I’ll speak to her about that, alright? But you don’t get to continually rub her face in her biggest regrets just because you dislike her.”

There’s a long, long pause, and then d’Artagnan gives a nod. “Fine,” he grinds out the word. Athos can tell he still thinks he’s in the right, but that he’ll humour Athos from now on and keep the insults to a minimum. “But if she ever hurts you again -”

“If I hurt him again, then there’s nothing you could do to make me regret it more than I already would,” Milady says simply, appearing beside Athos. She and d’Artagnan stare at each other intensely, and Athos can see there’s some kind of silent communication going on. Whatever’s going on, the conversation is about him, and he knows it, is almost amused by that knowledge. Eventually, Milady inclines her head slightly, and d’Artagnan gives another one of those nods and turns away – a truce, Athos thinks, for his sake, but what the terms of it are, he can’t even begin to guess.

“Well,” she says, taking his hand again. “I think I found Louis his next wife, judging by how well they’re hitting it off. Shall we go now?”

X_X_X_X_X

She grows quieter and quieter as they drive to the storage facility, and she can tell she’s worrying him by the way he reaches across and rests a hand on her leg, squeezing to comfort her. It doesn’t help as much as it usually would, though. She appreciates the thought, but her mind is on the diamond pendant she’s playing with. It’s almost more confusing to her than the key.

Louis was right, in a way. This feels… final. She thought Armand Richelieu’s last plot was the kind found in a graveyard, but mysterious keys and careful contingencies are so very _him_ , and she feels that same churn of excitement and concern she used to experience whenever he did anything behind her back. It hadn’t been a common occurrence, but he occasionally had schemes he didn’t share with her – he traded in secrets, after all, and was too cunning and suspicious to share them all with anyone, even his right hand woman. Sometimes it felt like his orders were tests. Sometimes she suspected he watched her as closely as she watched him, if not more so.

So the key feels like business as usual, but in a slightly depressing way because there _is_ no more usual and certainly no more business. The pendant, on the other hand, is unexplainable. It’s… sentimental. She could see him being sentimental with Treville, his old enemy and older friend. She could understand it with Adele or with Louis. Him being sentimental towards her, on the other hand, is unprecedented. She doesn’t know quite what to make of it.

After they park and head past the gate guard, Athos takes her hand, intertwining their fingers as they walk towards their number. She’s sure she must look faintly ridiculous to other people when they do that – holding hands like besotted teenagers is something she thought of herself as too old for back even when she was still a child. With their history, it’s even more absurd. She likes it anyway, though. It makes her feel like he wants to show her off – no, that’s not quite right. It makes her feel like he wants to show off how happy they are and how thrilled he is that they’ve somehow gotten another chance. It’s like he can’t stand not to be touching her. She feels the same.

Of course, she has to let him go to unlock the door to the box. It’s a large metal shipping container, barely lit and boiling as they step inside.

She blinks as her eyes adjust, and then nearly takes a step back.

Filing cabinets. Big metal filing cabinets, floor to ceiling, with little placards on them helpfully mentioning what letters they cover. When she opens one at random, she finds that inside they’re split alphabetically as well, in smaller increments. There must be hundreds of files here, she thinks incredulously – no, thousands. She pulls one out and recognises it immediately. It’s identical to the one they had for this man in their offices, before Rochefort came in and destroyed them all.

“I have the files back,” she says, surprised. “My God, I could start up the business again.” Then she remembers that the business in question often involved screwing over Athos and his team. “Or at least a version of it. Focusing on different things, perhaps.” After all, the cases Richelieu loved most were often the ones she found slightly distasteful, and vice versa. He was big picture and liked the world to be smooth and sensible, but she took pleasure bringing a more direct and personal sort of justice to the individuals they often had to deal with. “There’s a lot more people like Sarazin out there, or Sofia and Francesco, or Labarge, or even Rochefort. Many of them could be quite profitable to take down. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the files in here -”

Then she stiffens as it occurs to her.

Athos moves at the same time she does and reaches it first, pulling open the first R drawer for her and gesturing politely as she starts to go through it. A quick scan proves it doesn’t go far enough to get to Ro-, but the second drawer does. Rochefort. His file is thick – thicker than she remembers. She runs her eyes over the first dozen pages, flipping through so quickly she only manages to get a general idea of the contents, then wordlessly passes it to Athos.

His eyes widen as he reads it more slowly. “Proof of Rochefort stalking Ana de Bourbon,” he says disbelievingly. “Circumstantial evidence for Marguerite, Alvarez, and three other disappearances. A sketch of the man who shot me with a list of known aliases and possible other jobs he’s done for Rochefort.”

“Some notes on Rochefort’s plans,” Milady adds. So this was the information Richelieu had on Rochefort, the blackmail that pushed them into a permanent standoff. God knows what Rochefort had on Richelieu that kept him from using it – perhaps they’ll find it when they get the chance to go through all of Rochefort’s belongings. “Ways into his house, where he keeps information, his vulnerabilities.”

“Not enough to put him away.” Athos says, still sounding stunned despite this. “But if we’d gotten this, it certainly would have given us a good place to start. With all this, the case would probably have been over in a few days.”

“What case?” Milady says. She’s starting to smile, despite herself. “He meant for me to get this, after all. It’s more than enough information for me to blackmail him or plant more evidence or set him up to get killed by a business partner or – well, anything, really. Not that I would,” she adds hurriedly and unconvingly as he looks at her. Right. She’s supposed to be better than that. She feels a reflexive rush of shame, and anger at herself for feeling ashamed – a feeling she hasn’t missed at all.

She wants to be a better person – sometimes, anyway. What she doesn’t want is to always feel terribly, shamefully aware that she’s not quite good enough as she is. Or, worse, feel like he’s constantly forgiving her for not being good enough, like he’s constantly forgiving her for just being herself. She didn’t have to worry about not being good enough when she was leaving for England. There would’ve been no one to impress but herself. It was the only high point about leaving.

To her surprise, he smiles that sardonic half smile of his. “Of course not,” he says, making it clear he doesn’t believe a word of it, but doesn’t mind anyway. “Which is a shame, because I can’t think of a better target – what’s the matter?”

Something else has just occurred to her. “He thought I’d get this right away,” she says. “Because he left strict instructions, and he assumed they’d be followed just as quickly as if he was still alive. But the executors worked slowly and I was too busy being blackmailed to hurry them along. He _planned_ for his death, the bastard, instead of warning me it might happen.”

From Athos’s expression, he finds this entirely unsurprising. And it is very Richelieu, now she thinks about it – he wouldn’t want to be honest about being in serious trouble, not if Rochefort had information on him as well, but he’d certainly plan for all contingencies.

“Just think,” Athos says quietly. “If you’d gotten these, you wouldn’t have needed to come to us. You would’ve never shown up at my place.”

No. No, she wouldn’t have. She feels almost dizzy for a second, half-panicking at the idea. They would still hate each other. She wouldn’t have him, just guilt and grief and hatred eating her from the inside out like a cancer. She’d be alone.

Then she looks at him, and there’s relief and amazement in his eyes as well, and then suddenly it becomes hilarious. All these weeks, all this work, all this effort… and it turns out all she needed to do was go to the executors and demand to get her inheritance early. Oh, it’s not a complete waste, they got Sarazin, and Sofia and Francesco, and LaBarge, but _still_. It could so easily not have happened. She laughs, and somehow it spreads to him, and he pulls her close and they’re just leaning on each other, laughing helplessly.

She stops laughing slowly as she remembers how many more files there are here than were in their offices. Hundreds more, surely. Some are probably old. Others… well, others he might not have wanted to keep in the office, for various reasons. 

“Anne?” He’s alerted by her sudden expression of concern, the way she pulls back from him.

“There might be a file on me,” she explains shortly, heading for the Ws. She begins flicking through quickly, but she can’t see her name anywhere.

He pauses, and then walks over to the beginning – B, she realises with incredulous amusement. As if Richelieu would have her file under de Breuil. He knew damn well that wasn’t any realer a name than Milady de Winter. There’s no chance –

“I found it,” Athos says. He winces as he reaches up to grab the file, the movement stretching his still-healing wound.

_”Athos,”_ she says, too sharply, a reprimand, already reaching out to snatch it from his hands before he can open it. He pauses, in the middle of holding it out for her, and she feels a sudden flush of shame as she realises he never intended to look inside, that all he was planning to do was pass it over. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” he says, deliberately gentle. “I don’t want to see inside.”

“You don’t want to?”

“I don’t need to,” he corrects himself. “If there’s anything you want me to know, you’ll tell me.” He pauses, then double checks, “Won’t you? You have to know that it wouldn’t change anything.”

“Why do I have to know that?” Honesty always changes things. Always. She doesn’t know what’s in that file, what dark and ugly truths it contains. She’s done things that make her want to withdraw from herself in disgust. How would he react?

“Anne.” He sighs, looking suddenly older then his years. “You keep acting like what we have is so _fragile_. But honestly, if we still want to be together after the things we’ve done to each other, I can’t imagine what it would take to change that now. There’s nothing written in this file that would make me leave you or make me hate you. I _promise_.”

It feels like there’s a lump in her throat, blocking her from breathing, blocking her from speaking. Somehow she works through it. She doesn’t take the file. “Read it,” she says hoarsely. “Read it and then tell me if you feel the same.”

“Not if it upsets you -”

“Just fucking read it, okay?”

There’s a brief silence as they stare at each other, and then he flips the file open. He scans instead of reads, judging by how quickly he goes through it. His expression doesn’t change one iota for the first few pages, and then he flinches.

“The LeMaitre brothers?” she asks, mouth dry. She’s done some horrific things in her time, but there are actions taken that wake her in the night sometimes, and her brief work for them is among them. Thankfully, both brothers are dead now. She wonders just what her file says about those deaths.

He clears his throat, dragging his eyes off the page. “No. The Sheffields.”

She shakes her head, not recognising the name. That seems to almost shock him more.

“Your foster parents. For a few months when you were twelve.”

It takes her a moment to locate the memory, and then she flinches too. But that wasn’t a crime of hers, wasn’t a sin, wasn’t a regret. Oh, at the time she thought it was her fault, because kids generally do, but as an adult she knows who the villains are in that particular story. _That’s_ what makes him recoil? “Right.”

He gets through more pages, then at the end he screws up his face – he’s clearly trying not to do so, trying not to upset her, but it’s too instinctual a reaction to stop. She moves around, sick at heart, to look at what he’s looking at. Ah. So some photos of her from her sex work days have survived. The photos are horrifyingly explicit, but more than that, she hates her inability to hide her expression in a few of them – discomfort. Fear. Disgust. The good old days when she was not only illegally soliciting but on the run, and so had no one to complain to, no one she could expect to help her if someone took things where she didn’t want them to go. Sex work is one thing. Sex work when there’s no safety, no protection, and no one to come running when you yell is an entirely different beast.

But it’s still not… what she expected, really. What about her real crimes? Did Richelieu edit her file? Censor it just in case she found it herself and was furious at him for keeping a stock of incriminating information on her?

She takes the file from his unresisting hands, and flips back a few pages, then flinches herself. No, the LeMaitre brothers are definitely in there. So is nearly everything, she realises as she keeps scanning, feeling sick. Every little disgusting, scummy choice she made, back when it felt like they weren’t choices at all, back when she thought there _were_ no choices. 

“Do you still feel -” she begins, but her voice cracks and she has to start again. “Do you still feel like it doesn’t change anything?”

She remembers the girl he fell in love with, the façade. Simple and sweet and yet sexy, every man’s ideal, the love interest in some prettily fictional movie – the kind of girl who never dirtied her hands, never broke her word, never crossed a line. The kind of girl someone could love. Not her, with blood under her fingernails and a scar across her throat and curses on her tongue, with a thousand horrific stories and just as many horrific actions. She never had a Prince Charming to keep her safe, and you couldn’t be the Princess without one, so instead she learnt to be the Evil Queen. There was no one to protect her so she protected herself. And then she had him, but how was she supposed to know what to do after that? She didn’t have a pattern to follow, didn’t have any relevant experience to draw on. She could pretend to be the damsel in distress but she wasn’t one. She didn’t know how to depend on someone else, how to place her future in their hands. She was used to rejection, to judgement, to relying on herself, to trusting no one else. So that’s what she did. The woman she pretended to be would never have had to to hide anything, but she wasn’t that woman, that woman was a dream. His dream.

He closes the file, then reaches over and pulls her close, to an embrace instead of a kiss, and there’s something even more intimate about that. “Of course it does. It means I know you better. I want to know everything about you – or everything you’re willing to tell me, at least.” He swallows. “You already know the worst of me, after all.”

“Athos…”

He ploughs on. “You told me once that all your actions form a pattern, that they prove you’re a bad person. I don’t see a bad person. I see a survivor. But what I did – I wasn’t trying to survive. I was just lashing out. That’s the difference.”

“Athos. You can’t tell me you don’t wish…” Her voice wavers, but then it comes back stronger. “You want the truth. I know that. But you loved the girl you thought I was, and you wish that girl was the truth, not me. Oh, you’ll take me, but only because you want her -”

“Don’t you _ever_ say that to me again.” The exclamation is like a crash of thunder, too loud, too sudden, echoing in this tin shed filled with secrets. He pushes himself away from her, pacing across the room only to return to her as if he can’t even bring himself to stay away even to make a point, grabbing her hands and squeezing them so tightly it nearly hurts. He’s furious, but worse than furious, he’s wounded, as if what she said was a deliberate attack. She can see it in his eyes. “I wish that no one had hurt you. I wish that _I_ hadn’t hurt you. I wish that you hadn’t needed to be a survivor. But I don’t wish you were someone else.”

“I was perfect back then. The girl I pretended to be was perfect. Now you know I’m… not.”

“I don’t want you perfect.” His voice cracks and breaks, and he leans forward unconsciously so that he’s speaking the words to her from only an inch away, pushing them at her so she has to hear them. “I want you flawed and messed up and furious. Like me. I don’t want a dream, I want reality, even the worst bits. Not just because you can’t have the good without the bad, or because I can’t be perfect either, but because I _like_ your flaws.”

She half-laughs, half-sighs at that. “I understand what you’re trying to do, but -”

“If you were perfect, I’d have to try and be perfect too, and that would be very uncomfortable.” He reaches up and grips her chin, keeps her gaze locked on his. “Not to mention very lonely. The world’s not any more perfect than we are. I want to face that with you, to understand it, to get through every day together. You can be violent and nasty and selfish sometimes – that’s okay. It’s part of what makes you strong. And it’s part of what makes you right for me, because I can be all those things as well. Maybe you wish you were perfect. But I don’t. I love _you_.” 

It feels, suddenly, like she’s choking. He sounds so much like he means it. He _does_ mean it, she realises with dawning wonder. He’s right, it was lonely, back when she was trying to be an ideal woman she couldn’t possibly hope to be. Back when she wanted so badly to be perfect. She still doesn’t know how to be perfect, but she’s been learning – slowly and painfully – to be _real_.

He’s still looking at her, and suddenly there’s something agonisingly uncertain in his face as well. “Did you… did you love me more before I was… before you knew how bad I could be? When I was less cynical? When I… when you thought I was a good person. When you thought I was perfect too. Is that… what you want?”

For the first time, she considers it the other way around, tries to take a step back emotionally and ask if she wants him to be perfect. Well, of course not. Athos can be cruel, but that’s what makes it so meaningful when he forces that impulse down and manages to be kind for her. His sharpness is part of what makes him funny, his anger is part of what makes him fierce. He’s terrible at talking about his emotions, but he’ll do it for her, and in some ways that’s better than if the words came easily, because it means she can trust them more. She wouldn’t wish away the worst parts of him, because it would also be blunting the best parts.

She did think he was perfect, once. But she wouldn’t want him to be the man she thought he was back when they were first married. Back then, she’d trusted him not to hurt her – but only physically. She’d never shared herself, because she’d looked at that gleaming and spotless small town cop, so righteous and earnest it hurt, and known he could never comprehend who she was. Maybe he could have been good and pure enough to generously forgive her past if she’d told him about it, to look past all her triggers and problems and mistakes and continue to care about her in spite of them (she flinches at the thought), but he could never have truly _understood_ her life. Now, he can, or at least he can come much closer to it. He can learn to understand it. She’s not saying what happened between them was a good thing – she’ll never say that – but that he grew up, that he left the little happy bubble they lived in, that he discovered shades of grey in the world, she’s grateful for that. 

Does this mean… is this something that can last? Really? Something true? If he wants her, _really_ wants her, not some perfect vision that exists in his mind… if he loves her… that seems impossible to her. Mad. But amazing, too. And it means she can _relax_ , stop being scared all the time, stop wondering if he wishes some imaginary version of her was lying next to him in bed.

“No,” she says in response to him. Her face is wet. She might be crying, she realises. She doesn’t cry. “No, I love you more now than I did then. And I’ll love you more tomorrow, okay? I don’t think… I don’t think I’m ever going to stop falling. For the rest of our lives, I’m going to fall for you more every single day.”

Athos swallows hard. “Good,” he says. “Me too. Will you marry me?”

“What?” She’s half-laughing, half-crying now as he pulls her even closer, burying her face in his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him so tightly that somewhere in the back of her mind she’s worried about hurting him. But he’s clutching her just as closely and she can’t even feel her broken ribs right now.

“Marry me. Again, I mean. I know it’s too fast, but... fuck, no it’s not. This is a lifetime, that’s the deal. Please. Let’s do it.”

“You really think we deserve a happy ending?” she says into his neck, before pulling back to look him square in the eye.

“A wise woman told me that sometimes we get more than we deserve,” he says, drawing her close, “God knows I have. So I’d quite like to keep it. I love you, Milady Anne Charlotte de Breuil de Winter Sheffield Branwell de la Chappelle -”

She laughs again.

“So would you please add de la Fere to the end of that mess again, buy a house with me, and live happily ever after,” he finishes. Despite his light words, his tone and expression are completely serious, and the look in his eyes is as much pleading as love.

She should tell him that they’re bound already, that there’s no need to get married. She doesn’t want him to think she’s after his money again. She can’t go through another divorce, the first one almost killed her. It’ll be throwing away every ounce of caution and care. It would be completely insane. They’re dysfunctional, and messy, and there’s a thousand ways this could fail.

And yet somehow, she doesn’t think it will.

“Of course I will,” she says, and kisses him.


End file.
